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.
Armed with this information, people like myself go to Google.com and search for people they wish to know more about, people we have met, and want to do business with in some fashion. I generally find out what I need and want to know; "Is this person real?" "Are they who and what they said they were?" These are the questions that I am answering. When my daughters start dating, I may go for the criminal background check, but that costs money.
Now I can see some of you starting to go through a bit of paranoia. That is unnecessary. There is nothing wrong with this, and withholding your name at dinner parties will make them less fun. So relax.
Control you Message
The real question and purpose of this article is to let you ask yourself this question: "What do people find when they look for me?" Yes we are back to Googling ourselves. If you are a member of an online community or social network like LinkedIN or Facebook, if you have a MySpace page or a blog, you should want people to be able to find those. They tell who you are. They tell your story. You get to control the message. There is going to be data out there that will include you, so be apart of it.
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