Difference between revisions of "John Wisniewski"

Revision as of 20:41, 17 February 2021 (view source) Wisniejd (Talk | contribs) ← Older edit		Revision as of 20:52, 17 February 2021 (view source) Wisniejd (Talk | contribs) Newer edit →
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	In order to actually find information about me, you have to look up my name in addition to other parameters. For instance, if you look up "John Wisniewski Umich" the first result is actually about me! Who knew that I would appear. This page is my LinkedIn page, which I will talk about in a little bit. However, if you look up my full name, "John David Wisniewski," I do not appear. If you look up my name and my home city you can access my voting records and information, which contain my address (which is scary). If you look up my name and my highschool you can access some of my sports records, including an article in a newspaper about my performance in a swim meet (which shows an old photo of me)<ref>http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/March%20CL%20Final.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/2015%20Feb.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/May%20CL%20Final.pdf</ref>. You can also access my 5k splits<ref>https://www.newtontiming.com/results/15/hartland/5krun.html</ref> and my mile time<ref>https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/SchoolRecords.aspx?SchoolID=35809&Grade=8</ref>. [[File:JohnWikiLinkedin.png|thumbnail|a photo of my linkedin]]You cannot access my best 5k time though, as my coach mistakenly thought my name was "Jon" the entire time I ran cross country (and yes I never corrected him). If you look up my U of M uniquename you can see my medium posts.		In order to actually find information about me, you have to look up my name in addition to other parameters. For instance, if you look up "John Wisniewski Umich" the first result is actually about me! Who knew that I would appear. This page is my LinkedIn page, which I will talk about in a little bit. However, if you look up my full name, "John David Wisniewski," I do not appear. If you look up my name and my home city you can access my voting records and information, which contain my address (which is scary). If you look up my name and my highschool you can access some of my sports records, including an article in a newspaper about my performance in a swim meet (which shows an old photo of me)<ref>http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/March%20CL%20Final.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/2015%20Feb.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/May%20CL%20Final.pdf</ref>. You can also access my 5k splits<ref>https://www.newtontiming.com/results/15/hartland/5krun.html</ref> and my mile time<ref>https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/SchoolRecords.aspx?SchoolID=35809&Grade=8</ref>. [[File:JohnWikiLinkedin.png|thumbnail|a photo of my linkedin]]You cannot access my best 5k time though, as my coach mistakenly thought my name was "Jon" the entire time I ran cross country (and yes I never corrected him). If you look up my U of M uniquename you can see my medium posts.
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−	===Twitter===
−	I also briefly wanted to mention my Twitter account, as it is public but is not associated with me. I have not included my name, phone number, or email on the profile, but my data is most likely open to researchers and the Twitter API. I am sure they still collect identifying information on me, like my IP address, but this is not viewable to everyday users.
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−	I don't really know how I feel about this. I am sure that if my tweets appear in a research situation they will not contain identifying information besides potentially my IP address and I don't really have a choice in the matter. If I could I would prevent this from happening, and I honestly should delete the account (because I don't use it anymore)
	===LinkedIn===		===LinkedIn===

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Revision as of 20:52, 17 February 2021

Hi! Nice to meet you, my name is John (you can call me Jon or John whatever you want). If you wanna learn more about me feel free to read About John Wisniewski. I know you probably came to this page expecting a highly polished essay about my online identity: however, I wanted to make something a bit more personal. I don't know what inspired this or if I'll end up keeping this page like this, but for now, buckle up and enjoy the story of my online identity. If there's one thing I've learned (and that I hope to convey) it's that I live under the illusion of data privacy. Also PS if youre reading this I am going to edit this. It sounds so unpolished. anyways

Public Information

Not a whole lot of my information is public. I have worked very hard to make sure that my information is private (at least to outside viewers). When you look me up (like "john Wisniewski") no results about me come up. This is mainly because there is a prominent politician that shares my name (if you haven't ascertained, my name is pretty popular). He looks a little bit like Joe Biden and also appears to have finished serving in the New Jersey legislature^[1].

In order to actually find information about me, you have to look up my name in addition to other parameters. For instance, if you look up "John Wisniewski Umich" the first result is actually about me! Who knew that I would appear. This page is my LinkedIn page, which I will talk about in a little bit. However, if you look up my full name, "John David Wisniewski," I do not appear. If you look up my name and my home city you can access my voting records and information, which contain my address (which is scary). If you look up my name and my highschool you can access some of my sports records, including an article in a newspaper about my performance in a swim meet (which shows an old photo of me)^[2][3][4]. You can also access my 5k splits^[5] and my mile time^[6]. You cannot access my best 5k time though, as my coach mistakenly thought my name was "Jon" the entire time I ran cross country (and yes I never corrected him). If you look up my U of M uniquename you can see my medium posts.

LinkedIn

As promised before I felt it was important to address the premier source of information about me online. My public LinkedIn profile represents me in a very professional manner. I mention my educational background and my involvement with my friend's startup in my bio. I also feature my interests and skills. I am glad this is the first result because it is in a situation where I control the narrative. I have added all the information and can verify it to make sure that it is correct and portrays me in an accurate manner. Even though I curate the information, I do not fully control how my data is used. When I created my account I did not look into the privacy settings. Now, when researching this project I have found the many areas where I allowed LinkedIn to use my data. For some reason when I made my account, I assumed I could trust LinkedIn with my data, and believed they would not use it in a bad manner. My information was also available to recruiters and anyone who looked me up. Overall, LinkedIn is perhaps the most visible part of my online identity, however, it does not constitute a majority of my online data creation.

Despite my LinkedIn profile, A lot of public information you will find on me is very confusing. Both my first name and last name are very popular (my mom says our last name is like the polish version of "smith"). Even when you look up my high school and my name, other results come up that don't pertain to me. This is a trend I saw a lot, and if you didn't know anything about me, you would have a very hard time looking me up. I often wonder how other people interpret the information they find when they search for me. Do they realize the information is from someone else? Do they think the other Wisniewskis that come up are related to me? I will never know.

Private Information

Beyond my LinkedIn account, I do not really appear much online. However, this is not to say that I am not online. I have public accounts on Tik Tok, Snapchat, and Twitter: however, it is much harder to find these accounts. I also am active on Discord, Slack, YouTube, and GroupMe, however, I do not believe you can search individual users on these platforms.

I have attempted to look up these profiles in the respective apps, and it was hard to find them (there are two photos illustrating my attempts). Most of them are anonymous or not associated directly with me. My "professional" Instagram and other social media profiles do not show up when you search my name. This was interesting because I figured even if my account was private, people would still be able to see it: however, this is most likely not the case unless you know my exact username. I can only assume this is because I do not have a lot of followers, and I imagine if you were somewhat associated with me I would show up.

What do I Think?

Despite all this, I am more than positive my data is still being collected. I have investigated Instagram's privacy policy, and they are collecting data on me. Not only are they collecting data about what I view and how I interact with other users on the platform but they also collect data based on my device and location^[7]. Their privacy policy, in my opinion, seemed to collect a lot more information than other sites. Instagram appears to collect a lot more information for services I have never heard of and won't ever use. It also appears to collect data to provide "insights for social good," which you can't turn off ^[8]. Even LinkedIn appears to have a much better privacy policy. When they generate insights you are not identified, which seems to be a step up from other social media platforms.

However, there are some downsides. LinkedIn's privacy policy is very hard to understand, and this is because they have included short summaries of the information in the policy. However, this adds excess clutter and I don't trust the information. I did notice they collect data from sites you were on before LinkedIn and also where you went after, which was interesting^[9]. Also, when I attempted to limit the use of my LinkedIn data on my phone, I got an error message no matter how many times I tried to access the page. This is alarming, as most people view LinkedIn from their phone ^[10]. I don't know if this was intentional, but it made it much harder to see how my data is being used.

Overall, I feel like I am under the illusion that my data is private. My data is private to many outside eyes, but not to social media companies. Most of the time, a company's privacy policy seemed reasonable, however, there were instances from Instagram and LinkedIn that made me question how they got approval to collect that data. it seems, for lack of a better word, sketchy. Some companies are at least attempting to protect privacy, which I think is a great start.

References

1. ↑ Wikipedia:John Wisniewski
2. ↑ http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/March%20CL%20Final.pdf
3. ↑ http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/2015%20Feb.pdf
4. ↑ http://www.hartlandschools.us/documents/Community%20Life/May%20CL%20Final.pdf
5. ↑ https://www.newtontiming.com/results/15/hartland/5krun.html
6. ↑ https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/SchoolRecords.aspx?SchoolID=35809&Grade=8
7. ↑ https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
8. ↑ https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
9. ↑ https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy
10. ↑ https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/audience