Difference between revisions of "Catherine Yang"
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==<b> Who I Am </b> == | ==<b> Who I Am </b> == | ||
| − | It’s difficult to try to gauge what your online identity is like, and how others might perceive you if they find you online before meeting you in person. Ironically, I have actually never thought too much about my digital presence, and yet I've occasionally dug quite deep into someone else’s information online. To start off, my name is quite ordinary, and both my first and last name are common. “Catherine” is an old and consistently used English name, and “Yang” is a very common Chinese last name. Thus, when going into the process of searching myself up, I expected that I would probably be able to find some information about myself, such as social media accounts, but not enough information that someone could be sure their search results actually match me. | + | It’s difficult to try to gauge what your online identity is like, and how others might perceive you if they find you online before meeting you in person. Ironically, I have actually never thought too much about my digital presence, and yet I've occasionally dug quite deep into someone else’s information online. To start off, my name is quite ordinary, and both my first and last name are common. “Catherine” is an old and consistently used English name, and “Yang” is a very common Chinese last name. I have the typical social media accounts, such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat. Thus, when going into the process of searching myself up, I expected that I would probably be able to find some information about myself, such as social media accounts, but not enough information that someone could be sure their search results actually match me. |
=== <big>'''Google'''</big> === | === <big>'''Google'''</big> === | ||
Revision as of 01:15, 25 February 2021
Contents
Who I Am
It’s difficult to try to gauge what your online identity is like, and how others might perceive you if they find you online before meeting you in person. Ironically, I have actually never thought too much about my digital presence, and yet I've occasionally dug quite deep into someone else’s information online. To start off, my name is quite ordinary, and both my first and last name are common. “Catherine” is an old and consistently used English name, and “Yang” is a very common Chinese last name. I have the typical social media accounts, such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat. Thus, when going into the process of searching myself up, I expected that I would probably be able to find some information about myself, such as social media accounts, but not enough information that someone could be sure their search results actually match me.
When I look up “Catherine Yang” in non-incognito mode, the first results that show up seem to be about an author or journalist with the same name. This makes sense, since if someone is publishing articles or writing online for others to see, they would likely have a larger digital presence than me and most other people. Then, around the bottom of the first page, my LinkedIn account shows up. Because my LinkedIn mentions the university I attend, someone who wants to look me up and knows what school I go to could probably be relatively certain that I really am the person on my LinkedIn profile. One thing I noticed was that at the bottom of the search results, Google also suggests the search “catherine yang grey’s anatomy”. I think this is suggested because one of the characters in the TV show "Grey’s Anatomy" is played by the Asian American actress Cristina Yang. This is really interesting, and I wonder if Google would recommend a similar search if neither I nor the actress had an Asian last name. After looking at a few of the first pages of the search results, it seems like most of the results were referring to doctors and medical professionals named “Catherine Yang”, and so the only information I really found about myself in the first few pages was my LinkedIn profile.
Google, Incognito Edition
Afterwards, I looked up my name in incognito mode, and I was a bit surprised to find that the results were exactly the same. Then, I went on my phone in private mode and used data instead of wifi, and still had the same search results on the first few pages. However, as the page number increased, the results started to be slightly different, but I still didn't find any search results that actually corresponded to me. It was interesting that on my phone, my LinkedIn profile still appeared on the first page of results. Even when I don't browse in private mode on my phone, I am not signed into any personal accounts on Safari, and I also turned my wifi off before searching myself up. This means that there is definitely a lot of other data that helps Google identify me, and possibly my school and location.
After looking up only my full name, I wanted to try to see if I could find any other social media accounts, and so I Googled “Catherine Yang Facebook” in non-incognito mode on my computer. No relevant results showed up for the first few pages, so I refined my search to “Catherine Yang Facebook university of michigan”. Interestingly enough, I still couldn’t find my Facebook account. Instead, the first result that showed up was for someone named “Katherine Yang” who attends the University of Michigan. However, I don’t remember changing any privacy settings on my Facebook, and it says on my profile that I attend the University of Michigan, so I wonder why I couldn’t find any information about my Facebook. In fact, by the time I was looking at the second page of results, they were not even related to Facebook anymore.
My Hometown
Then, for my last search, I decided to Google my full name along with my hometown, and the results honestly surprised me a lot. For some reason, the first two results both linked to my LinkedIn account, but the headline descriptions were different. The first result was titled “Catherine Yang - Mission San Jose High School - Fremont...” and the second result was titled “Catherine Yang - UX Designer - Design Clinic | UM School of …”. I am not sure if this is just a glitch, but regardless, I think the implications are really interesting. Although this is just my own hypothesis, I think the first result showcased my high school in the title instead because I specified my hometown in the search bar, and clearly my high school was in my hometown, whereas the second search result shows what a description of my LinkedIn would typically be. It seems like Google or LinkedIn is personalizing the headlines of search results to cater to what someone searched, which is pretty scary to think about. If you know even one detail about someone and search that detail along with their name, Google could immediately point you to a relevant search result and even change the literal headline to capture your attention. This brings up a lot of ethical issues with personalization and privacy, and I wonder if anyone else has experienced something similar as well.
Conclusion and Reflection
After doing several searches to attempt to gauge what my online presence looks like, I can definitely conclude that it is inaccurate and not wholly representative of me. I was surprised that I could essentially only find my LinkedIn account, even though I rarely use it and don’t think it’s very prominent in my life. Additionally, even without specifying “LinkedIn” in the search, Google still showed my LinkedIn profile in results, and yet when I made a very specific Google search with both the terms “Facebook” and “university of michigan”, I couldn't find my Facebook at all, which I use daily. However, I definitely do appreciate this regardless of why my Facebook didn't show up, since I'd be much more horrified if someone I don't know tried to learn about who I am through my Facebook than my LinkedIn. I also felt a bit relieved when trying to find information about my digital presence because my name is quite ordinary and common. I think I would be more anxious about my identity online if I had a more unique name, since then it’s much more likely that someone who searches my name can be sure the results match me and not someone else with the same name. Overall, I think that if someone were to look me up, they wouldn’t find anything that tells them who I really am and what I do. Although this makes me feel somewhat reassured, I definitely want to be more aware of how I present myself online, both intentionally and unintentionally, seeing as information about me could be nothing more than a few clicks and words away.
