Difference between revisions of "Catherine Grillo"
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| − | [[File:cg_google_search.png|400px|thumbnail|right|The images that appear when I google 'Catherine Grillo']]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. | + | [[File:cg_google_search.png|400px|thumbnail|right|The images that appear when I google 'Catherine Grillo']]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. \n |
==<big>Search Engines</big>== | ==<big>Search Engines</big>== | ||
Revision as of 21:44, 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. \n
Contents
Search Engines
Google Search
I broke my Google search down into a couple of different categories. First, I searched just my name. Second, I searched my name and my hometown. I was planning on doing more search variations but, these two queries were all it took to find an alarming amount of information about me. While searching just my name, my social media accounts appeared with pictures I have posted over the years. Additionally, I was able to find my Medium account for this class and the blogs I have posted, as well as comments I have made. More interestingly, unlisted softball recruitment YouTube videos appeared as one of the first results. As you can see, from just this basic search, many things can be found about me like my university, my jobs, my major, where I am from, pictures of me, as well as my social media accounts.
My second query yielded more troubling results. After searching both my name and my hometown, it seemed that I was able to find out. essentially everything I needed to know about myself. In particular, a profile of me on FastPeopleSearch was one of the first results. This had my address, age, a map of where my house is, my past addresses, and an in-depth list of my relatives. I was very taken aback by these results. I expected to find pictures of myself online from years of social media use and articles from high school track and softball, but I never would have suspected that it would be so easy to find my home address for free. It was so easy to find, it was one of the first things I saw.
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 in this section I do not even know.
My Online Identity
My Information Across Platforms
When I started this data identity journey, I expected the information found about me across different search engines to be relatively stable, or equal. I was very surprised and troubled, to see that this was not the case. How did FastPeopleSearch from my Google query get so much personal information about me? How did Google know who my relatives were? Why did Bing associate me with people I have never heard of? It feels as though my questions will never be answered. The only search engine I was not troubled by was Ecosia.
It is strange to me that one search engine can hold an abundance of personal information, while other ones might display harmless, surface-level information. The question of whether or not displaying where I live is ethical plagues me. It is strange to know anyone can look up my name and hometown and one of the first things that displays will be my address and my family members.
Information Accuracy
Conclusion
While I can see both positives and negatives regarding the ease of obtaining personal information, I feel that the negative outcomes for having an abundance of personal information about you outweigh the positive outcomes. Having my address, or anyone’s address, displayed could be dangerous for a multitude of reasons. Displaying a full interactive google map of my house – including street view – and the surrounding area takes this one step further. I now feel as if nothing is truly private. Looking forward, I should be more careful about what I put online, because clearly there is a great deal of information about me. For example, my twitter account was one thing that appeared in all three search engines. Maybe I could de-activate this account since I have not used it in two years. This would probably get rid of most of the pictures displayed on Google Images of me and this action would also remove a result from Ecosia and Bing.
