I mean, you have a gmail account, right? Then you already have a google account, so however much you are exposed now, G+ wouldn't make it more.
-wraith808
All my 'public' non-specific Gmail and Hotmail accounts were created back when you could get one for the asking without any back reference to anything with your real name on it. They've stood me in good stead.
There was a SF story I read once where members of a society of computer types suddenly found it necessary to be "seriously gone" as the saying goes. When one character called and warned another to start creating a new identity, the older member just smiled. "I don't need to create a new identity, my friend," he told the younger guy. "Because I have
never used my
real one. All I need to do is forget the false identities I have used these last 45 years."
That sounded like true wisdom to me. And following in that fictional character's footsteps is the only way I can see where it would even be remotely possible to preserve some personal privacy up on the web.
But to pull it off, it needs to be done up front and maintained constantly. Kinda like the ending in the movie
Spy Game when Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) retires from the CIA and all his coworkers and bosses suddenly discover just how little they know about their field agent. In the course of the film it's revealed that
nobody is 100% sure of
anything about him. Even something as basic as his real date of birth.
There's a scene where his protege, Tom Bishop, hands him a birthday present with a smug smile. Muir looks both surprised and strangely proud of him...
Bishop: Happy Birthday, Nathan. Did you know Langley has seven different birth dates for you?
Nathan Muir: And they're all wrong.
Bishop: I know, believe me, it wasn't easy. KGB, Mossad, also wrong...Fortunately I was well trained.
What's interesting is the smile Muir flashes him. But it isn't until later in the film that you start to wonder if that smile was because Muir was happy the man he trained succeeded in finding one tiny true fact about him - or if he was chuckling inside because he hadn't. And much like the Bishop character, we'll never know. (Sly little movie. Well worth seeing. Much of what happens in
Spy Games is a mirror for what we see going on all around us.)
FWIW, I'm not 100% sure why I'm so skittish about bandying my identity about up on the web either. So I don't have any arguments to offer that might help you sway your wife over to your (our) point of view. Suffice to say there's something deep down inside me that feels it's somehow important to not be too public when it comes to using a virtually unregulated global data network.
Of course I'd prefer to think it's just me. Because I'd rather be diagnosed as paranoid than know with utter certainty that I live in a world where such concerns are justified
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