The Great Data Mine
This week, I felt like a private investigator as I examined my digital tattoo. A digital tattoo is the information about you that exists online. This includes information that you post online, your online activity, and things others post online about you. I did a deep dive and performed a data mine to search for information about myself. I didn't expect to find much information, as I have most of my social media accounts on private. That being said, I was eager to what was out there!
It surprised me that just by putting in my address, Nuwber had information about my college education. How is my college education linked to my address? It did make me smile that my astrological sign was included in the results.
The Data Mine
First, I began with a simple Google search of my name and my location (Chicago), using the Safari browser. I had over 103,000,000 results. Because I have such a common name, I realized I was going to have to use more limiters to help narrow down the search. I decided to include my zip code in the search. This resulted in 71,000 results. There were two matches on the first page of results. One was my grandmother's obituary from 2013 on the Chicago Sun Times website. The other was on the website FastBackgroundCheck. It listed information about my house, my phone number, my birthdate, an image of my house, and my relatives.
Next, I looked myself up on Nuwber. I used the name search function first, but there were too many results. When I searched with my address, there I was.
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I also used LocatePeople and searched for my name. There were over 139 results for "Mary Lee" in Illinois, with mine being the ninth result. This information was similar to the information found on the FastBackgroundCheck results. One thing that was wrong was a listed email. It had hotmail.com as the domain name; however, I have never had a hotmail account.
I used the Google Chrome browser to search my job title, name, and employer, which resulted in me finding postings of programs I have done at work, my work address, and contact information. I forgot that I attached my image and name to programs I have conducted. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because I am proud of my work and it is a way to keep record of my work history. It is a little unsettling how easy it is to find out what hours I work, and how to get in contact with me. I also was able to find my current salary, as I work a city job and this is public information.
I used Bing on the Google Chrome browser to search common usernames I have used in the past. I found my Twitter account easily, two Instagram accounts (I forgot I even had one of them), and my Letterboxd account.
Final Thoughts
Even with my private social media accounts, there is still a lot of information online about me due to it being public information. I found this activity beneficial to me, as it made me more aware of what information I am sharing publicly, and what information is public information. It also me reflect on how I want to have more of a professional presence online to connecting with other professionals and for future employment opportunities.
I do think data mining should be taught to high school aged students by technology teachers, counselors, and parents. Teenagers are growing up in a world where posting online is second nature. When you are a teenager, you don't think of how your digital tattoo is growing every time you pick up your phone and post to social media. By doing a data mine of themselves, it will help them be more mindful of what they are posting. I do think it is technology teachers, counselors, and parents joint responsibly to share this information with students. What a parent might say doesn't hold the same weight as what teacher might say, and vice versa. It takes a group effort to connect with kids and inform them about digital tattoos.
I agree that data mining should be taught in schools because young people should know about the consequences of what happens when they post something online.
ReplyDeleteIt is shocking to see what is data is gathered from these sites. I am in an interesting position where my full name Jameson Ghalioungui, is highly unique and there is usually only 1 or 2 listings. I am shocked of the accuracy even for a name like Mary Lee. I am glad you accounted for this! Excellent deep dive!!
ReplyDeleteFrom Mic Guti: Hi, Mary. I know another Mary Lee and I know it's a common name, but even so, I was suprised to see how many hits you got! This seems handy if you like to maintain a degree of anonymity, but it seems like there could also be issues with getting confused with others. I'm reminded of someone who kept ending up struggling to get on airplane because someone with the same name was on a no fly list. I didn't think my name was very common, but I did see several people pop up with the same name, and some of the material was a little unsavory, so it makes me wonder how things go for people with very common names.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that this type of analysis should be taught to kids and parents. I worry about it particularly for activists and also undocumented people. Folks are not always thinking through how evidence of their participation in political protests or posting information that could connect to immigration status might impact them in the future, especially if political climates or immigration rules or individual situations change.
Hard agree about teaching data mining in schools. I think as social media use becomes more common with younger and younger students, we should maybe even start as young as 5th grade. Snapchats disappear, but they aren't gone. Instagram is meant to be public for anyone to see. Don't even talk to me about TikTok. All of these services are regularly used day to day for students, and their online presence begins as soon as they "confirm password." That's frightening, but it's still a tool that can be somewhat controlled with the proper training.
ReplyDeleteThat's so interesting how searching your name needed extra filters in order to find your information. My name did not need such filters as there aren't many people with my name. However, I did notice other people show up in my search results if shared some similarities such as the same first or last name, or even parts of my name.
ReplyDeleteThanks for a great post! Undergrad was a while ago, and my college email has loooong since been deactivated, but, like you, I found my old college information alive and well. Also, I think you made a good point about names. Remember when the trend among baby names was to make the spelling a little more unique? Perhaps you can enjoy more anonymity later in life by having a more commonly used name or spelling.
ReplyDeleteData mining needs to be taught by all of us!
ReplyDeleteI felt like a detective too (and love your hamster detective image). Over 100 million initial hits is crazy! Narrowing it down with the zip code was a good idea but still so many!
ReplyDeleteIt is a bit scary how much is public information. I also agree that we all need to establish our professional presence online and that children, especially teens, need to be guided to do so. Great post!