I scrolled through the listings and sure enough some of them were about me. Most of the listings that came up were competitor lists from rowing programmes as I have spent several years as a rowing coach. No surprise. One of them was to do with a University play which I helped produce which I was shocked to find my current mobile phone number published. Another was a quote I had made for an article about romance for the Sydney Morning Herald. Cringe.

Then I found another listing which was from an Athen's Olympics web log. In August 2004 another Oliver Pennington had posted a request for the Olympic Gold Medal winning shooter, Michael Diamond. The question, which was alongside several others from obvious gun nuts read, "i am doing a six thinking hat project on michael diamond can you please send some information to me ps I am doing the hats on you because I am doing a project called masters of the mellenium."

The first problem I have is the Edward de Bono six hats thing. Self help books are one of my pet hates, so I am not at all comfortable with my namesake wanting to know how a conceptual paradigm for lateral and creative thinking helped Michael Diamond win Gold. (If you are unfamiliar with de Bono and the "Six Thinking Hats" visit www.sixhats.com)

I also have concerns that out of all the people in the world who he could have chosen to be the subject of his doubly misspelt project titled "Masters of the Mellenium" (should have read Millennium) he chose Michael Diamond. I am sure that Diamond is an excellent marksman, and maybe one of the greatest in Olympic history, but a master of the millennium after not quite five years? De Bono and Diamond? One more slip up and I'm afraid we'll have to let you go, Mr Pennington.

I then noticed that he had left a reply email address in case anybody wished to respond to his comment. The prefix of which was "fatdude_1". That was the final straw. Oliver Pennington is not ready to carry the mantle of the original funny fat'man.

What irked me more than either of these trivial annoyances, was the fact that out in there in suburban Australia another me. An Oliver Pennington with a point of view, who is into Edward de Bono and hats and misspellings and guns and things that I couldn't care less about. That is my name! Who is this impostor who has so rudely misused my identity? Then I had the thought that he might be older than me. Does this mean that I am the impostor?

Amongst the other listings were several other Oliver Penningtons, Ollie Penningtons, Oli Penningtons and OJ Penningtons and all the other permutations of my name. They come from all over the English speaking world and from other times and places in history. I felt an irrational sense of pride (or was that narcissism?) to be a member of this group defined by little more than a name that was becoming increasingly common with each listing I clicked my cursor on.

I then started "Googling" family members, friends, ex'girlfriends, colleagues and acquaintances and was surprised to find the number of listings that I did. Most were from University or sporting associations and clubs, and a few workmates had been quoted in industry publications. All the entries I found were innocuous. For instance I did not find out that my brother was really the leader of a Satanic cult, or that a work colleague was moonlighting as a male porn star. What I discovered was no more saucy than finding a familiar name in the BDM notices or White Pages.

As corporations, institutions and individuals replace paper with digital archives it is likely that there will be more and more personal information freely available about all of us scattered across the internet. Will it soon be possible to track the personal or professional history of almost anyone with a few minutes tinkering around on an internet search engine?

The threat of identity theft, and horror tales of disappearing bank balances and surprise credit card purchases have been with us since that terrible movie The Net was released in the '90s. But as commerce relies more and more upon the internet as a

 marketplace, the protection of our financial details will become more important to banks and vendors alike. The misuse of customer details would surely jeopardize the reputation of any business. I do not think we should be overly worried about this.

My concern is that the freedom of access to information about individuals will take some of the mystery out of life. Instead of discovering the trivialities about our friends, family and acquaintances through the Grapevine, we may stumble across the same information on the internet, but without the subjective element. The Grapevine has a habit of exaggerating or understating certain aspects of the truth, and in doing so creates heroes and villains alike. The latter does not. Imagine my great'grandson, who might well bear my initials, in some future time "Googling" his name only to find this article. "I had heard that my great'grandfather was a fine visionary and brilliant intellect," he might think, "but now I know he was little more than a hack."