Difference between revisions of "Catherine Grillo"
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While exploring images, I found that Ecosia displayed no images of me, just a link to an unlisted YouTube video about softball recruitment that included an image of me. This is in stark contrast to Google that had multiple images of me come up, as well as images I have posted on social media of friends. | While exploring images, I found that Ecosia displayed no images of me, just a link to an unlisted YouTube video about softball recruitment that included an image of me. This is in stark contrast to Google that had multiple images of me come up, as well as images I have posted on social media of friends. | ||
====Bing Search==== | ====Bing Search==== | ||
| − | + | Lastly, I explored a search engine I have never liked, [https://www.bing.com/ Bing]. Yet again, I was surprised to find that upon searching only my full name, very little information about me specifically was displayed. Among a heap of other Catherines, Katherines, and Cathys, the only thing displayed about me was my softball recruitment video filmed in high school – a general theme I am seeing at this point is that this video is very persistent. When I searched my full name paired with my town, the same information appeared as Ecosia. However, to my surprise, a little profile of myself was displayed on the side of the page that had my school, major, LinkedIn account, work experience, and a “People Also Searched For” section. Bing claims this information is from LinkedIn, but how did it grab the names of people I do not know and have not connected with on LinkedIn? There were no pictures of me displayed, but I would almost rather there be pictures than an in-depth profile down the side of the search results page. What is more troubling is, some of the people listed as in this section I do not even know. | |
==My Online Identity== | ==My Online Identity== | ||
Revision as of 21:34, 18 February 2021
I have always been pretty active online, so when I first searched myself on Google, I was not surprised to see that I did not need to do much of a “deep dive” to find information about myself. I would say that my first name is pretty common, so I was expecting to see many people named Catherine Grillo pop up that were not me. While this was the case, it was still very easy to find photos of myself from high school, sports statistics, and social media accounts. One concern I had when first searching myself is that Google already knows who I am because I use the search engine every day. To mitigate this information Google has on me, I decided to search myself on an incognito browser. I would like to think that an incognito browser helps with a fresh start on Google because I was not logged into my account, and therefore there was no browsing history for Google to reference. I also used different search engines to compare the results (spoiler alert: Google's results were the most concerning). The results from my Google search were troubling, yet at the same time, completely unsurprising. I will admit, it is unsettling to know that someone can easily find all my addresses and my relatives and my demographic information from a simple Google search. I knew I would be able to find social media accounts, like LinkedIn, but I did not expect to find very personal information and also personal familial information. A general theme I noticed throughout my searching is that I felt a feeling of unsettlement from being able to find so much information about myself in such a short amount of time. And not only was there an abundance of information, but it was completely accurate as well.
Contents
Search Engines
Google Search
Ecosia Search
After the troubling results from Google, I was not excited to start my search on the second search engine, Ecosia. However, I was pleasantly surprised when the only thing that appeared that was about me when I searched my name was an old softball recruitment video about offensive highlights and my high school track statistics. I did not see any of my social media accounts, just accounts for different people with my name or similar names. When I searched my name paired with my hometown, my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts appeared. Additionally, more statistics from high school sports appeared, and information about my father also was in the results. I found this strange because while I searched my own name, my father’s name came up. I assume that Ecosia somehow knew I was related to this particular Vincent Grillo.
While exploring images, I found that Ecosia displayed no images of me, just a link to an unlisted YouTube video about softball recruitment that included an image of me. This is in stark contrast to Google that had multiple images of me come up, as well as images I have posted on social media of friends.
Bing Search
Lastly, I explored a search engine I have never liked, Bing. Yet again, I was surprised to find that upon searching only my full name, very little information about me specifically was displayed. Among a heap of other Catherines, Katherines, and Cathys, the only thing displayed about me was my softball recruitment video filmed in high school – a general theme I am seeing at this point is that this video is very persistent. When I searched my full name paired with my town, the same information appeared as Ecosia. However, to my surprise, a little profile of myself was displayed on the side of the page that had my school, major, LinkedIn account, work experience, and a “People Also Searched For” section. Bing claims this information is from LinkedIn, but how did it grab the names of people I do not know and have not connected with on LinkedIn? There were no pictures of me displayed, but I would almost rather there be pictures than an in-depth profile down the side of the search results page. What is more troubling is, some of the people listed as in this section I do not even know.
