Emma Muth

Though I have, like most people, searched myself on the Internet before, I have never approached it asking, “Who does the Internet say I am?” As I began this assignment, I was curious— I have heard many people mention their high school athletics records, club-related activities, or other high-school-related results, and as someone who was homeschooled from preschool until high school graduation, I knew that would not be the case for me. In fact, I was fairly confident I would be happy with my online footprint and the privacy I'd achieved. Regardless, I set out, with only my name in my virtual hand, to see what I could find. While I did find confirmation that I have locked down my personal information fairly successfully, I left with more questions about information "leakage" and questions about the ethical implications of these leaks and their accuracy (or lack thereof).

A Restricted Perspective

At a young age, I learned to be protective of my online identity. When my parents helped me create my first Facebook page on my thirteenth birthday (and not a day sooner), they guided me through keeping it as private as possible and warned me against accepting friend requests from strangers. It is funny how these things from childhood persist— to this day, I always feel a little unsettled if one of my social media accounts is set to public. As an artifact of this, according to my Internet searches, I virtually didn’t exist until I graduated from community college, which is the earliest photo I can find of myself by searching my name (first + last as well as first + middle + last).

Even my decade-old Facebook profile does not directly come up in any searches, though a rogue post—a prize drawing on Facebook that I won from a dentist in my hometown—and comment—me tagging a coworker in about a cat adoption day—did appear at some point. Even the twenty-word bio on my private Instagram, admittedly the most personal information able to be found, paints a fairly generic picture of a senior in college who is majoring in computer science, works at a library, is a Christian, and is either engaged or married as of last July (it isn’t clear from my bio alone). As I tried to read this imagining I was a stranger, it felt like peering in through a window— what you see isn't wrong, but there's a lot missing. You wouldn't know I have three sisters, that my best friend lives in Alaska, that this May will be six years since my aunt died. I've been shaped by these elements of life, but you'd never know that by just peering through the window.

The Data Jackpot of LinkedIn

Offering a more detailed perspective is LinkedIn, the very first result you get when you search my name. Kudos to Google, it is also the most accurate and detailed search result on page 1, rising above the LinkedIn profile of an Emma Muth in Nevada and an Emma Muth from the 1940 census. Without even clicking on the link, it immediately tells the casual online wanderer or curious classmate that I work (and presumably go to school) at the University of Michigan. Once you click on the link, you can see a treasure trove of details— work, school, and volunteer history that essentially give away where I live (one of the reasons I was hesitant to create a LinkedIn in the first place) and where I've been professionally and educationally for the past six years. While this is the most extensive record of existence I could find, the perspective in many ways is just as limited as my twenty-word Instagram bio. You know that I attend the University of Michigan and have been involved in a few different roles as a student instructor, but what isn't clear is my passion for teaching. It's clear that I've worked as a library clerk for about four years, but no one would know how much I love that job, that I've actually worked at the library in total for nine years, and I'm already emotional about having to quit after I graduate. First looks can be deceiving— despite having more detail, my LinkedIn page is still only another window.

Information "Leaks"

All these results were ones I expected, more or less. However, a particularly surprising result showed me that information “leaks” may be more common than I realized. On the first page of search results was a wedding website called The Knot with my name and my fiancé's name. I am getting married this year, but we created our wedding website through a different company entirely, so my interest was piqued. When I clicked on it, I found it wasn’t our entire wedding site, but rather just our Target wedding registry with our names and our wedding date. I was left wondering when I unknowingly signed off on Target sharing that information with The Knot. While our official wedding website did show up on the first-page search as well, it was well below this link. Information I wanted and intended to share was less accessible than something I didn’t even know I had shared. We’ve talked in class about the obfuscation of how our information is used introduced by many Terms and Conditions documents and the question of where the responsibility falls—on the user to read the full disclosure of how their information is being used or on the distributors of the technology to make it more easily consumable. While this is a question outside of the scope of this exposition, I believe the practicality of sifting through and deciphering these types of documents should be questioned. If I had a more decipherable snapshot of how my wedding website would use my information, this could have been an expected result and not felt like an information "leak," a snippet of information in the digital world that felt out of my control.

Am I In Control?

What is the ethical difference between leaks and simply inaccurate information? Consulting Data Brokers, going as far as possible without having to pay, forced me to compare and contrast these concepts. The supposedly glowing reviews, ranging from “I found out my husband was a cheater!” to “I reconnected with my long-lost sister!” were peppered with warnings and sensationalized pop-ups about what you might be on the verge of finding out.

I admit the dramatized warnings made me laugh—as if I was going to unearth world-shattering revelations about myself—but simultaneously I wondered how many people had found truth or, in contrast, been led astray by the results here. For example, it listed multiple cities and alternate names for me, but only one in each category was correct. If it couldn’t even guarantee my nicknames were correct, what if someone believed all its claims about my dating profiles (which don’t exist) or arrest record (also nonexistent)? Another data broker claimed a phone number my family had not used in at least a decade was first reported in 2019 and connected to me. Naturally, I started thinking—when did I put that phone number out there? How did they get it, but not until 2019? And if I felt uncomfortable with this allegedly salacious report, was I powerless to remove it? It turns out the answer is no. For many of these sites, including the one I used, you do have the option to request information removal. However, as they note themselves, you are not scrubbing these details from the Internet, just ensuring the results don't appear through their sites. If you believe their claims that their information comes from public records, it's still available for people to find if they are looking.

Conclusion

I am fairly happy with my online presence. Most of what I found was accurate, and even if it wasn't, the inaccuracies weren’t damaging. I don't foresee an incorrect Coursicle profile hurting me in the future. But I know that not everyone is that lucky— how many actions are immortalized on the Internet? As we grow and change, is it ethical that we have no say in resetting or erasing portions of our digital footprint? Even if we could, what implications would that have? My very first result is a necessity for job searching, but it also reveals quite a bit about the past five years of my life. Can you have the necessities without compromising privacy?

I’m glad I did this before my wedding this fall because I can’t help but wonder how the stability of this information will shift after my last name changes. How long will it take them to catch up with me? How long until they associate my new last name with my “old” identity? I doubt I can escape the Internet; indeed, as the world becomes more technologized, I doubt anyone can.

most diff part ofthis was putting myself in someone else's shoes