After my post last week about the internet and social interaction, opinions were shared about social networking. I tend to view Facebook the way Brian Ridder does, that it helps me stay connected to people with whom I otherwise would have lost contact with. But for people who are unfamiliar with its usage, these sites (MySpace and Facebook in particular) can feel like "spying". I'm not much of a MySpace user, but regarding Facebook, I know that only people whom I have approved can look at my profile have access to my information, and also they only know as much as I put out there. To that end, I am still mindful of what comments and photos I am willing to share, and I also behave knowing that anything I write to anyone else is considered public conversation.
But after that, I went on to think about how much information is available online about individuals. I started wondering what is out there for people to see without my knowledge. I'm not really concerned about it, but the curiosity burned so that I wanted to search my own name and see how much someone could find out about me if they were really determined.
So I started with the easy stuff, like just googling my name and my previous name, and using the same names in yellowpages and people-finding sites. I didn't find any current information, such as my redidential address or phone number, but a limited amount of outdated stuff. So I decided to take it a step further and buy a cheap people search feature through "People Finders". I was kind of surprised at how much came up-- yet still, none of it was current. I have had the name "Dey" for 4 years, and my current address and cell phone number were not on the report I viewed. But under my old name, the report gave the names and ages of my parents and brother, and all of my ex-in-laws names and ages, including the grandparents who died 15 years ago. I found all my previous addresses and phone numbers and my date of birth. When I did an address search on a home I preniously owned, I found all that information about my former roommate as well!
Beyond this information, the site keeps prompting you to pay more money for more reports, including a criminal background check and other such reports, so a person of serious or stalker-type intent could potentially find out more. I thought this was an interesting experiment into what is out there, floating around on the internet. I was glad not to find any photos or information that I was unaware of, and to not to discover anything embarrasing or terribly inaccurate about myself.
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Why would you mention me by name? Do you know how many people will read this? What are they going to think of me? They're gonna spread rumors about us, Chelle!
My only response to people with the attitude you mention is: Don't flatter yourself. You're not interesting enough to be spied on.
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