I Google people.
If I had said this a decade ago, you would have thought that I was confessing to something akin to being a peeping tom or voyeur. But today, everyone reading this knows that I am telling you that I look people up on Google to see what the Internet says about them.
Privacy vs. Anonymity
I see some of you out their squirming to write something back in defense of privacy that you think you have a right to. I am sorry to be the one to tell you, privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. There are parts of your life and data that the law will protect. Most of it is fair game. And game is the right word.
Somewhere it got into our conciousness that if we use handles like "RubberDuck21" or "CyberToad69" that no one would know who we were, and we would be anonymous on the Internet. That sitting at home in your PJs, you can go online and create a whole new, disposable, and untraceable identities. That what you do online is somehow protected and private and anonymous. Well this has always been false.
Going online with an alias of CyberToad is just as anonymous as putting on a mask and going to a Halloween party. It works until you start talking. As soon as you open your mouth, you start giving yourself away. This means that if you go online, and shop, chat, blog, or search, there is data stored that makes a profile of you. This profile was not created by the penetrating act of hacking and ID theft, it is just a gathering of information that you gave away, freely.
How to find People
Have you ever Googled yourself? If not, you should. You may have to use more than your name, especially if you are a John or Sarah. There is some other Roy Hayward that is a hairdresser in the UK. He takes the number one spot on Google for my name, but he is not me, and no one is really confused. When I Google people, I generally have a few bits of information in addition to a name.
When you talk to someone on the bus or the plane, most people learn one or more places that you have lived. We volunteer this information in casual conversation. When we volunteer information we are surrendering some of our privacy.
So now we have at least the state, and most times the city. Most meetings give away a few other things like gender and ethnicity, whether we have a family, etc. If you are a professional, you may give out your industry and even your employer. With these small and common pieces of information, it becomes obvious that I am not the Roy Hayward in the UK, but the Roy Hayward in Utah. It works the same for you.
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