Ok, Here's a weird one...but first some background (which, on re-reading is over long but stick with me).
As I explain at the top, the name Paradasos is basically a literal translation of the meaning of the name 'Fraser' into Greek. The short version of the long story stems from the 'His Dark Materials' books and the fact that everyone had a personal Daemon with a grand, classical sounding name. I decided Paradasos would be my Daemon name.
Unlike the many variations of my full name I had chosen for usernames at various points, Paradasos had the advantage that I seemed to be the only one online (ignoring the Italian Restaurant in Alaska) and over a period of time, it stuck.
I once became aware that one of our Flickr pictures had been used to illustrate someone elses blog post. That's covered by the Creative Commons Licence we assigned the pictures and I'm more than happy for this sort of thing to happen, but it made me curious if anyone else had done the same. So I googled 'Paradasos'. And amongst all the expected entries, was a site about Kilted Pride which collected pictures of men in kilts. There was a piss-take picture we took ages ago of each of us wearing my kilt and doing a mock highland fling. Someone had posted this picture on the board and a few people had made light hearted comments underneath. It was funny and I knew I was potentially opening myself up to ridicule by posting that picture on a public photosite anyway so, again, this didnt bother me.
Cut forward 6 months and I became aware of Google Alerts. Basically, you can set a search term you are interested in and Google will send you an email either as soon as it finds a new result, or once a week send you a roundup. Just because I was interested if anyone else was using our pictures, (and to feed my egotistical side!) I decided to sign up for a weekly email for 'Paradasos' search results.
Again, mainly what you would expect. Various posts I've made around the place, more mention of the alaskan restaurant and a German White Stripes message board posting our Flickr pictures from the Raconteurs gig.
Still with me?...this is where it gets weird.
There was a result in the weekly Google Alerts email this week which was a search results page from a web-dating site, confirming that there was no results for 'Paradasos'. This means someone searched for 'Paradasos' on the dating site. Everyone that knows me personally, knows I'm engaged so they're unlikely to go searching for me on a dating site. Meaning that, if the search was in any way connected to myself (and about 98% of all google results for the word are), it had to be someone I don't know personally.
It could be pure coincidence, but it seems possible that some random stranger has seen my profile somewhere, and decided to see if I was registered on their dating site of choice.
I know a lot of people are creeped out by lack of privacy online, but I cant help but think that having a random stranger checking me out online is less creepy than the fact that I immediately knew they'd done it.
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