Cleansing Your Digital Shadow: A Nearly Impossible Task

A few months ago I got an e-mail from a woman about a story I'd written nearly three years ago. To protect her privacy I'll call her Samantha Sugarlips.

In that story, which I'd written for my somewhat more sarcastic blog, I mocked this woman for posting photos and other personal information to Facebook, then turning around and suing the social network for allowing other people to view them. At the time it seemed like nothing more than a desperate attempt to generate publicity for Samantha, an aspiring actress, especially given the fact that she had posted similar photos to her own Web site as well as to MySpace. (As it turns out, the real story is quite different -- but that's a topic for another time.)

My blog post was hardly the only one to talk about the suit, but I had a bit of fun at her expense and included some of the photos available on her other pages. Those photos, with links to my story, kept showing up in Google Images whenever anyone searched on her real name. Now Samantha was writing to me to ask if I would please remove that post, as she was embarking on a new career and my story could prove embarrassing if not outright damaging to her reputation.