Metafilter noticed an old weblog post about Maury Povich that, over the years, inadvertently convinced some web searchers that the site was either owned or at least read by Povich. Many Metafilter readers shared similar stories of people mistaking their web site as an official voice or forum for a subject they mentioned in passing. An early BrainLog post (and follow-up) on the theoretical risk of posting personal information to a website linked to from unsolicited email, despite repeated clarification in the original posts and comment threads, continues to confuse some to the point of convincing them that I have the ability to give them credit cards, and the best way to get one is to post their personal information to a public comment forum.

I wish I could go beyond the "boy aren't they stupid" reaction and figure out what would be necessary to further prevent this kind of misunderstanding. It appears there are many people, perhaps new to the Internet, that do not understand the basic nature of the activity of web browsing and searching.

I would guess that some people type domain names into Google as their primary method of finding a website from a URL found offline, which implies an understandable confusion about the notion of web addresses. Google has acknowledged this common behavior with a special response to searches for domain names to clarify the user's intentions. If they click through to find web pages that contain the term, they get me at the top, but with excerpts that clearly state the B of A marketing website is not, to my knowledge, a scam, which I would hope would also clarify that I am not B of A, not to mention my site's design, format and content. The effort required to get to my site and post personal information to a public comment thread is too great to assume that people are misunderstanding my site's identity.

I can only conclude that there are a bunch of critical misapprehensions about the activity of web browsing— or even just using a computer— at work. I'd bet that these users know I'm not B of A, but still believe posting a comment or sending the website owner email is an appropriate next step to getting what they want. Bloggers are often called upon by random web searchers as if they were experts on a subject mentioned in passing. Coupled with a lack of understanding about protecting personal information and the public nature of most web sites, naive users could get into trouble that mere changes to my website cannot prevent.