John Wisniewski

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 as 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.

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 (he also asserts that my last name is pronounced incorrectly).

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," and now since you know my middle name you cannot betray me), 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). You can also access my 5k splits and my mile time (somehow I was able to run a mile in 5:35 which is astounding).

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.

LinkedIn

As promised before I felt it was important to address the premier source of information about me online. As I mentioned before, you have to look up "John Wisniewski umich" and this result comes up. My 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.

a photo of my LinkedIn privacy settings

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: However, I will talk more about this later. My information was also available to recruiters and anyone who looked me up.