Lindsay, whose heart I unfortunately broke, is moving in with the boyfriend she had just before we dated.

Anne, who left 19 profanity-laced messages on my voicemail in an eight-hour-period after I dumped her, won some kind of prestigious architecture award. And Deirdre, who was beautiful but vacant, is still looking for that fairytale prince on Lavalife and posting missed connections on craigslist.

Less than 20 minutes on the Internet and that's what I found out about some of my ex-girlfriends.

Now that Google has become a verb, and posting profiles on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace is the norm, it's become a snap to find out what (and who) our exes are doing.

Beyond all these easy-to-use tools, those who are truly computer savvy can find out pretty much anything about anyone who is leaving an e-trail behind them. But is it always a good thing to do?

Let's examine a few scenarios before answering that question.

Me

I check up on my exes pretty regularly. Due to some poor choices on my part, there are quite a few of them. Sometimes I'm sitting in front of my computer and they pop into my head, so I might as well find out what they're up to without all the awkwardness of calling them up on the phone. I'll admit that it sometimes feels pretty weird, like what I'm doing is somehow creepy or wrong. In my defense, I'm not trying to hook with these women and the thought of an ex doing the same to me doesn't get my back up, so no harm no foul, right?

Elaine

Elaine had one of those break-ups that take seemingly forever to get over. She thought she had met The One but he had a different opinion and ended their relationship two years ago. "It took me about a year-and-a-half to stop thinking about him every single day," she says, "but then I got to a better place and accepted it."

Then, around six months ago, Elaine looked him up and came across his Facebook page. Her heart sank as, one by one, she went through all the pictures of his recent wedding. "It really woke something up in me. I looked at every single picture, imagining what it would have been like to be married to him like I'd always wanted. I couldn't stop crying, but I couldn't stop going through the photos... His wife's not even that pretty."