on discarding on-line anonymity

Since the advent of web search, by which I mean Google, I've prided myself on having a nearly minimal internet footprint. I considered my virtual anonymity a precious thing, hiding behind pseudonyms and generally keeping a low profile. As of a month or so ago, searching on my name would have yielded little more than a joke I sent to rec.humor.funny some decades ago and some observations I had made on the ACM Forum On Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems (also known as comp.risks). It is perhaps worth noting that those links actually point to websites because the Usenet news system has been effectively dead for some years with some more stalwart groups migrating to the web.