User:Brantv
My name is Brant Thomas Verlinde. I have a pretty unique name, so it’s very easy to find me on the internet.
Google Identity
When I google myself, all kinds of social media links present themselves. LinkedIn, Twitter, Spotify, SoundCloud, Medium… and my address?? The very front page of google lists the location where I live. I don’t even have to click on the link to see my home address. The Michigan Resident Database is a website that uses voter registration to make all the information much easier to access. Clicking on the link brings up even more information. My birth year, my home mailing address, my voter ID number, people who live near me, and family members. All at the click of a button. There are options to view my background report, but those require money to access. I’m scared to even think about what kind of information they could sell to anybody on the internet. After a little more digging, I found an opt-out form for the database, and you better believe I filled that out as fast as possible.
My social media accounts were much more standard. Everything that wasn’t private, was available with a single click. My employment history, though it hasn’t been updated in a while, was available on LinkedIn. My twitter posts, which I thought were private, also came up. I switched my account to private shortly after. To my surprise, I found two SoundCloud accounts. I must have forgotten my password and made a second at some point, as one didn’t have any kind of activity on it. Interestingly enough, the comments we made for blog posts 1 and 2 also showed up, but the actual stories did not. I’m sure I would find them if I dug deep enough into the Google search results though.
Deeper Search Results
As we delve deeper into the Google query, the results become less pertinent, but sometimes more interesting. A 2016 document outlined the plan our high school advisory council came up with. A roster for my high school lacrosse team, a page listing honor’s students also from my high school, more lacrosse stuff, tennis roster, an old college blog post, etcetera. If I had to guess, I would say that Google search results are prioritized by how recently the page was created.
On the third page, the only relevant finding was a middle school writing prompt that had the names of everyone in the class. On page four, there’s a research paper about string theory and quantum particles. I wish I could say I was involved in that, but the authors are other Verlindes. Maybe I can reach out and have an interesting conversation with them. On the fifth page, my address shows up again! After opting out of that page as well, I decided to do a little more research into the topic. These websites use public, but very difficult to read voter records, turn them into much more readily accessible information on the internet, and oftentimes charge the user to remove the content. It appears being a responsible voter has caused me to become a hostage to internet ransoms. From pages six and on, information is very scarce.
The occasional, ancient article about lacrosse or some other club I was in pops up, but the links are few and far between. All the way on page twelve yielded a result that I found to be quite funny. Back in 2014, as a fifth grader, I “researched” and made a YouTube video about a location in Russia called the Berezniki sinkhole. An investor on seekingalpha.com found my video somehow and credited me as an amateur author regarding the incident. Kind of fun to think a fifth grader’s slideshow could have sparked some potential investments.
Google Ad Preferences
If you didn’t know, you can visit adssettings.google.com to see how Google’s algorithms interpret you as a consumer. They create these tags based on your search history and from other Google platforms (like YouTube) to generate more relevant personalized advertisements for users.
