User:Ccastroa
Carol Castro is a Senior at the University of Michigan studying User Experience Design.
My Data Identity
As someone who grew up in an age where technology was advancing every day and now lives a life where technology plays a role in almost every aspect, I must say, my online data identity is accurate depending on which name you use to search. My full name is Carol Leena Castro-Adolphus. At School, I go by Carol Castro or Carol Castro-Adolphus. However, online for professional websites such as LinkedIn and my portfolio I go by Carol Castro-Adolphus but for Facebook, I go by Carol Castro. At home with my family, I just go by Leena.
At home, I go by Leena because my mother’s name is Carol Adolphus-Castro. Note: Our last names are flipped. Having a similar name to my mother’s has confused me in my life because when we are together, I am not sure who someone is referring to. While searching for the various names that I go by, I found that the search “Carol Castro-Adolphus” or “Carol Adolphus” received the most accurate information about me. Searchers can find my personal portfolio, actual photos, LinkedIn, articles about awards I have received in High School and college, my GitHub and YouTube account. Furthermore, the fourth result when searching Carol Adolphus into google was a page with a picture of my mom holding a mask she made for an event at National Louis University in 2012. I was not surprised to see that there was not a lot found on my mom because she does not have social media accounts and prefers that we do not post photos of her without her permission.
Google Searching
When searching just “Carol Castro”, there is a Brazilian actress, Carolina Osorio de Castro that goes by “Carol Castro” and there are thousands of pictures, movie reviews, and videos of her. It seems like it could be nearly impossible to find information about me when there is a famous person with the same name but if you check a few pages in on a google search, one could find my portfolio. I find this to be interesting because I expected it to be harder to find me with this name.
Brazilian Actress with same name
Continuing the search of my name online, I came across an old website of mine made on Weebly.com. I made this website when I was a junior in High School. It includes a personal statement about the art I was making at my performing arts school, had a resume that lists my home address, phone number, and all of the songs I sang, and it had a gallery with photos of me performing. As a senior who is currently studying User Experience design and has learned a significant amount of design principles and practices, I can wholeheartedly say that I am very ashamed of the attempt that was my first website. After finding it, I immediately tried to deactivate it, however, I am not sure which email I used to create to page. And knowing myself in 2014, I most likely created a completely random email and no longer remember it. My main concern about the website was that my resume included such personal information like the address where my parents live and my current cell number. This is not information that I want or ever should have put publicly on the internet for others to see.
Old Website from High School
Data Broker Instant Checkmate
The most invasive part of this assignment was reading the information taken from Instant Checkmate. All of the possible relatives listed are my relatives. Most of whom live in Chicago as well but one of my aunts currently lives in Florida. It even had my uncle’s ex-wife listed as a possible associate. It also says that she lives in Novi, MI now. I was aware she lived somewhere around Ann Arbor but now I had a specific area. In addition to family members, it listed my home address under my father’s information and all of the locations where my grandmother lived in Illinois when she was alive.
An interesting aspect of this Instant Checkmate report is that it states possible dates seen at my home address. I am confused and also a bit worried about the aspect of me being seen at my home address in Chicago. The report then goes on to list my neighbors’ names, Mr. Marty, Ms. Maxine, Cody that lives down the block, and more! Then it lists various possible sex offenders in the neighborhood.
Conclusions
The report was for the most part, terrifyingly accurate. But there were a few discrepancies, the very last thing listed as a possible social profile but the strange this is, it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my brother. His name is Christian but sometimes online he puts his name as Chrestian (for a reason unknown to me).
It is scary how much information these tools online can access about a single person’s life. This was a difficult task to go through what I have posted and what has been posted about me but over the years I have asked people to remove photos of me from online because they weren’t posted with my permission. I expected to see something different but was not surprised to see my posts. It is quite an accurate representation of my actual self and I look forward to doing another exercise like this in about 15 years to see what else is out there.
