   Art Gorski passes along this "Ego Surfing" reminder: Google can show you how much the Internet knows about you! When you enclose your first and last name with quotation marks and do a search you might be surprised to see what comes up.
   Google does let you specify "safe search." Read about it here, and this is where you indicate "do not filter," "use moderate filtering" (default setting), or "strict filtering." When you scroll to the bottom of that page you see that setting preferences will not work if you have disabled cookies in your browser.
   Google will notify you when new mention is made of your name. Go to Google > More > Even More and click on Alert, the first in the long list of features there. I subscribe to that myself to find out when someone has quoted something I've written, and then I go their site to view it. One of my poems, "Make a Memory" has been widely quoted and it's fun to see it used in other blogs and websites. Unless you specify strict filtering you may perhaps come upon some porno site that has used your name. I caution people about it, and continue to write to Google periodically to complain, but it still happens.