Hannah Engelman

Before looking myself up on the internet, I expected there to be a lot of information about me. Though I’m not an avid social media user anymore – I only have a Facebook, Instagram and (rarely used) Snapchat account – I grew up surrounded by the luxuries of instant access to everything online and have fully taken advantage of it. In recent years I have considered abstractly the impacts of Big Data and how I don’t necessarily want information about me available to anyone who looks. In actuality though, I haven’t taken many actions beyond the norm to protect my data on social media or elsewhere online. My Facebook and Instagram are private, but I allow third party cookies and cross-site tracking on all of my browsers. Considering this and the number of what I would consider noteworthy moments in my life, I was almost sad to find that information about me online is scarce.