Cyber-snooping or healthy curiosity? Either way, talk to most people, and they'll admit to having Googled an ex or two. You know how it is; you're wondering how/where wotsit is, and before you know it, you're trawling through 78 pages of namesakes - IT specialists, basketball players and some university professor who's just written a cutting-edge paper on that elusive coldsore cure. Never a quitter, you plough on and it becomes a quest – nay – a mission to find the real McCoy. And suddenly a whole day goes by and you've signed yourself up as a fully fledged cyber-stalker.

So, why is it so irresistible? Well, ideally it's a low-risk, civilised way of sleuthing someone without them knowing about it. More challenging than Friends Reunited but no investment required in terms of actual contact. On the darker side, we run the risk of discovering (if we still care, that is) that our erstwhile lovers' lives didn't just stop when we/they kicked them/us to the kerb. It can, after all, be a mite peeving if you're still smarting and you happen upon your ex's Babington House wedding photos in the public domain. Then again, that niggling feeling you had that they weren't actually the Earl of Suffolk as claimed can be cleared up in an instant.

Sometimes Googling barely manages to confirm someone's existence. So what if we draw an absolute blank? 'It's always quite satisfying when you don't actually find anything,' says Sarah, 32. 'I've gone online a few times to look up a particular lowlife who really did the dirty on me. He was forever boasting about his successful music career and all the albums he'd played on as a session musician. Finding nothing on him sort of confirms to me what a no-mark loser he was.'

Which implies there's some sort of kudos attached to a Google hit… Not always so. Says Jamie, 29, 'I Googled my ex and found a story from a local paper about him being convicted for drug offences and burglary. Which was sad, but not exactly a surprise.'

Googling 'the one who got away' can become dangerous, especially if it becomes an obsession. It's one thing to find out, say, that he's recently been on a charity trek to India, or to look up his holiday snaps on the family website. It's quite another if you find yourself Googling him day after day to unearth fresh information.

Helen* a computer-savvy marketing manager, is ashamed to say she's gone even further. 'I found myself digging up information on a gorgeous bloke I had a torrid fling with and his current girlfriend. I discovered photos of her and became obsessed. Then I figured out a way of actually deleting the pictures from the website.' Yikes!

On a serious note, sometimes Googling serves to put our minds at rest. I looked up a fondly remembered ex after 9/11. The last I'd heard, he was working in the building next to the World Trade Centre. After a bit of trawling, I found out he was alive and well, which was a huge relief.

What seems like an innocent search might open a painful can of worms if unreconciled feelings lurk. Nicola*, 48, got a shock when she was Googled by her first true love from 30 years ago. 'We'd been together for a few years when I was 16, but it all ended horribly when he two-timed me with my best friend. My whole life took a different direction after that – I moved away and started running a theatre company. He tracked me down last year via my website and we met up. He basically said the day I dumped him was the worst day of his life. It blew my mind, but we're both married with kids now and it's in the past.'

And what of the boom in blogging, where people choose to lay bare their innermost workings for public consumption? For Tom, 30, it was a case of too much information; 'I Googled my (now) ex-girlfriend when we were still together. She had a blog and to my horror was talking about what a jerk I was and how she was cheating on me – she was even banging on about how good the sex was with the other person.'

Pity Melinda*, a blogger in the States who started an 'online journal' (the blog's ancestor) in 1996. 'Nobody anticipated the coming of Google back then. I assumed that as long as I didn't directly give my website's URL to anyone, I wouldn't be found through a search engine. So when I wrote entries, I used everyone's first and last names. I was in high school at the time, and I was very gossipy on my website. My online service went kaput, but the thing's still there, so anyone who Googles the name I went by in high school will find out way, way too much information.'

Melinda had to change her name because of it, as she didn't want her employers Googling her. 'And if I dare to show up at my high school reunion, I'm sure I'll have rocks thrown at me.'

Which all goes to show that, when we Google, we might find out a few things we didn't bargain for. Let's face it, there's nothing wrong with casually looking up an old flame to see what's happened to them, but if you're still feeling bitter or horribly sad or madly obsessed, you could develop an e-stalking habit which might be hard to break… In which case; switch off that machine, build a bridge and get over it, girlfriend.

(* Names have been changed)

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