Kavya Pratapa

Introduction

All of my life I have been known as ‘Kavya Pratapa’. While my birth name is merely an extension of this name, I have adopted this abbreviated version to make navigating the social boundaries of school easier. Using ‘Kavya’ allowed my teachers, my friends, and my classmates to know who I was, since they could actually say my name. In a world where our name is a large part of our identity, I believed that being known as ‘Kavya’ made my social identity much more pronounced. Yet, as I embarked on this project, I realized that much of the information online about me was not about ‘Kavya Pratapa’, but actually about ‘Kavyapranati Pratapa’(my birth name).

Google Search

Something that I found to be interesting was how quickly the search results on Google would change when my query was my full birth name vs. my abbreviated name. When I googled my abbreviated name ‘Kavya Pratapa’, most of my social media accounts, like Facebook and Instagram came up. However, at the same time, a lot of the other search results were about a Bollywood film in which the lead actress’s name was ‘Kavya Pratap’. This was pretty surprising to me, especially since I have mostly used ‘Kavya Pratapa’ as my name throughout my educational journey so far. I expected to see more information about me that wasn’t just my social media accounts. On the other hand, when I googled my given birth name ‘Kavyapranati Pratapa’, all of the results were pertinent to me! The top two search results were my LinkedIn and WayUp profiles, but I also saw plenty of local newspaper articles about me from 2012 when I used to compete in spelling bee competitions. As I moved through the search result pages, I found random blogs that contained my name in pertinence to the spelling bees and even saw that there had been a Twitter hashtag of the word that I misspelled in the 2012 National Spelling Bee. It was pretty shocking to realize how many different sources of information contained my name, especially since I had never seen any of these results before!

Though I am aware of the dangers of having my online identity compromised, I have never given much thought to how easily my information online can be accessed. As Luciano Floridi writes “It’s not that we don’t care about privacy, but that we accept that being online may be one of the less private things about our life”. After having conducted my own “google search” of my name, I realized that there was a lot of data about me out there. I was pretty surprised to see information about me from 8 or 10 years ago still capable of being accessed easily. Yet, at the same time, none of the information that I found online by googling my name was information that was particularly disturbing or harmful to my carefully-crafted online self. While I realized that I had no control over whether I wanted to disclose that information or not on these random sites, none of the information was “sensitive” or harmful to my own identity. Therefore, I wasn’t incredibly concerned with the information I found on these random sites.

Data Broker Reports

As I looked through my data broker report, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The first couple pages were pulled from my Linkedin feed, though I did notice some inaccuracies. For example, I wrote on my profile that I would be interning at Deloitte this summer, but also had my previous summer internship at Denison Consulting in Ann Arbor listed. When I looked at my report, however, the same company ‘Denison Consulting’ was listed for both my upcoming and my current internships. Another discrepancy I noticed was in my education section of the same ‘Linkedin section’. Prior to having been accepted to the business minor, I was a part of the Cappo Sales Track program through the Ross School of Business. Even though I have updated my Linkedin profile to reflect my most current educational pursuits, my databroker profile still pulled data supposedly from one or two years ago when I was unsure of what my minor would be. As a result, this data is no longer accurate with what my educational pursuits are today.

Something that I was excited to see in my databroker profile was my previous places of residence. I have done all of my schooling in the Ann Arbor - Ypsilanti area, but I lived in Troy, Michigan and Dearborn, Michigan in the past. It was pretty interesting to see the exact addresses of the places I lived in within these cities. While I am not sure how accurate these addresses are since I moved to this area when I was only four, it was still interesting to see my places of residence ‘dug up’ by the data broker service. I was concerned to see the large amount of sex offenders that lived in my area. Growing up, I knew that Ypsilanti wasn’t one of the safest areas to live in, but I never paid that much attention to my surroundings. Since there were some discrepancies in the way my ‘Linkedin’ information was presented, I am curious to know how accurate Instant Checkmate is in terms of reporting sex offenders and possibly on other individuals who have committed crimes and live within your general community.

Google vs. Data Broker Reports

Lastly, echoing the phenomenon I observed when I googled myself, I noticed that under my social media profiles, only Linkedin and my email popped up. This is likely due to the fact that my Facebook and Instagram accounts feature my abbreviated name ‘Kavya Pratapa’. This led me to ask the same question as Haimson & Hoffman in their ‘Constructing and enforcing “authentic' ' identity online’: what constitutes as my authentic or real identity? To me, both of my names ‘Kavya Pratapa’ and ‘Kavyapranati Pratapa’ are parts of my authentic self. While I was given one name by my parents and only use it for professional and official purposes, my abbreviated name ‘Kavya’ allows me to socially assimilate to a greater degree since it’s easier to pronounce. Yet, on InstantCheckmate, these two names seem to be independent of one another. I couldn’t view any data on my Facebook or Instagram accounts since they were under my abbreviated name for social purposes. While I am not incredibly active on either platform, this is still data that provides insight into my social life. I don’t get that picture of myself if I rely only on my databroker profile.

This led me to wonder if the ‘self’ perpetrated by my data broker report is the ‘self’ that I want to project. While there were a lot of sex offenders on my profile, that is more a consequence of where I live rather than who I am. Apart from that, all of the information about me was a pretty positive depiction of myself: I am a student at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, I have had research experience, and I have had professional experience in the field of consulting. In a lot of ways, my data broker profile echoes the same version of myself as my ‘google search’ results: A university student who has always been involved in academic pursuits.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both my pursuits of a ‘google search’ and reviewing my data broker profile did not portray a version of myself that I found to be compromising of my identity online. At the same time, however, carrying two different names that I view as the exact same, portrayed an essentially biased version of myself, a curated version. While I don’t find this to be concerning since the curated version is ultimately a positive one, I did realize that my online identity is not the complete picture of myself. Academics have always been important to me, but I find having fun and spending time with friends is just as important, a feature of myself that neither my data broker profile nor my google search results of my full name depict. It’s only when I use my social identity ‘Kavya’ that you start to see me as beyond academics. But, with that identity, you only see my social identity.While I would rather have the professional, curated version of myself online, it isn’t the complete picture, or the most authentic representation of who I am.