The amount of information you can get on the Internet about someone is scary. So, just for fun, I decided to see how much information about myself I could get using nothing but Google and my name. I hoped to at least come up with my name and address. So I started by Googling "soren bjornstad". First up were two Twitter pages, but they were dead ends. Nothing but screen name and status updates. Next was a Family Links page. That's better: names of family members and a link to my web page. The site looked a bit broke, but I found an email, and better yet, the domain name. I visited whois.com, ran a database lookup, and whatdayaknow, there's my phone number, address, city, state, and country. While you can have your information removed from the WHOIS listing (for a fee, of course), I don't feel that one should be allowed to hide one's information if running a website, so I naturally don't do it.
Of course, this would only be available if you happen to have a website. So back to Google to keep looking, pretending I only have the name still. Oh, look--I was in Science Olympiad at Ben Franklin Middle School in 2008. Oh, look--Facebook. But unless I'm a friend of myself and logged in, I can't access anything but a picture that barely looks like me and an unrelated comment. But, there are some names of friends that might be able to tell me something if I looked them up. On to the second page. Here's an obituary, with names of family members that I might be able to look up and/or call to get more information from.
Oh, look--I play violin too, in the Benjamin Franklin Middle School orchestra. Ooh, I played violin at a concert in Munster too. There's my grade, and my city, if I hadn't gotten that already. And then I'm kind of stuck, so I try putting in other information I have with my name to drag up more specific stuff, but no luck.
At this point, though, I have many other names. Chances are that if I look them up, I'll get some contact information, and I can probably trick one of them into giving me, say, my email or phone number (perhaps I have an opportunity for me to play violin for something, or to participate in Science Olympiad camp). (I didn't try that, since it would take time, and I didn't feel like purposefully fooling people I knew, plus there would be a pretty good chance they would recognize my voice). Let's try that. With my phone number (which won't be too hard to get) I type it into Google, and--huh, there's my address and parents' names.
I should also mention that, not having any major legal documentation yet, my name doesn't appear in many directories. Try searching on yourself. It may be rather enlightening.
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Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com
Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."
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Good topic. I have often wished that I could remove certain things about me that are "out there" on the internet. But some things are probably going to be there forever! In the past few years, I have had some people contact me about removing names and such from websites that I put together. People are more and more concerned about privacy--and rightfully so. That's one nice thing about facebook--you have to give someone permission to see things about you--unless someone hacks in, of course!
ReplyDelete-- Jeff