Ian Mascarenhas

We’ve all probably Googled ourselves before. In the age of the Internet, everyone seems to have some sort of online presence. Whether it’s intentional or not, we all have created this presence simply by interacting with online artifacts such as social media. In the past ten years, data has become a very important component of the internet. Some even refer to it as the new oil. As a result, our data isn’t just out there for the purpose of Googling ourselves and having a laugh, but also so companies and other interested parties can access it and treat it like a commodity.

My 'Google' Identity

Search Query: 'Kavyapranati Pratapa'

On the other hand, when I googled

The first 4 Images when I googled my full name

my given birth name ‘Kavyapranati Pratapa’, I was able to find almost 5 pages of content that all had relevance to me! The top two search results were my Linkedin and WayUp profiles, but I also saw many more local newspaper articles about me from my spelling bee days within the first two pages. As I moved through the search results, I even found random blogs and discussion threads about the National Spelling Bee competitions that contained my name, with one user commenting how "with a name like Kavyapranati Pratapa, they can spell anything". What was most surprising, however, was finding a hashtag on Twitter of the very word that I misspelled in the 2012 National Spelling Bee!
Apart from

My very own Twitter Hashtag

'spelling bee' related results, there were a couple pages that contained my name from other activities, such as my vocal performances, my Medium blog that I don't post on anymore, the university's Honors Convocation last year, and even under another data broker service FastPeopleSearch.com. It was pretty shocking to see how many different sources of information contained my name. There was just too much out there.