Difference between revisions of "Kevin Zheng"

Revision as of 13:23, 28 February 2021

In my own personal experience, having a common name has held many frustrations. I’ve always wished that I had a cooler and more unique name that I could proudly say belongs to just myself, but when it comes to data online and privacy, I guess having such a common name has its perks. Hi, my name is Kevin Zheng.

Introducing My Name

I know what some of you may be thinking, “how is ‘Kevin Zheng’ a common name?” Well, this may be simpler to understand if you're of Asian descent—Chinese, specifically. There are two factors to this. First, my last name, ‘Zheng(郑)’, is a fairly popular family name in China. Secondly, out of all the English first names that Asian families typically choose from, ‘Kevin’ is one of the more common names you will see among Chinese Americans. As a result, I am likely one of many 'Kevin Zheng’s that exist in America.

Let's Google

Now onto my Google search results:

Searching... 'kevin zheng'

Image 1: Google search results for 'kevin zheng'

Since my name is pretty common within the Asian community, the idea beforehand of doing a Google search on my name seemed like an impossible task to try and find myself. To my amazement, doing a search on ‘Kevin Zheng’ on Google yielded some unexpected results.

Although the search results weren’t completely accurate in pinpointing information about me, I instead got a lot of results for a different ‘Kevin Zheng’. Now the scary thing is that this ‘Kevin Zheng’ that I found is another ‘Kevin Zheng’ that went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. So even though Google couldn’t pinpoint me, it found another person by my name that also went to the same university. I was shocked.

So was Google tracking my location and somehow knew that I went to the University of Michigan? If so, it probably thought that the other ‘Kevin Zheng’ might have been me, right? I honestly don’t know, but it's an absolutely terrifying correlation nonetheless. As I continue to look around, the search page is mostly of this other ‘Kevin Zheng’ and his online identity. You see his LinkedIn, his personal website, his Instagram, and also his Facebook.

I was surprised though, however, to find that Google managed to at least return one piece of online information about me from this generic search and that was the Twitter account I created from when I took SI 110 last year in the fall semester. On the contrary, the image results that came from this search were to no surprise: a bunch of random Asian guys with one image being my Twitter profile picture. At this point, I think Google is giving me search results of 'Kevin Zheng' not blindly, but related to the data they've collected from me thus far.

Searching... 'kevinzheng17'

Image 2: Google search images for 'kevin zheng'

Now, I wanted to try something more specific to my identity by doing a Google search on the username that I use for most of my social media accounts to see what I could further find by filtering the search.

This time, the top 3 search results were all social media accounts that belonged to me. The filtered search for ‘kevinzheng17’ instead allowed for Google to easily find my Instagram, Twitter, and even the YouTube channel that I created when I was in elementary school (which is kind of embarrassing but oh well).

Besides finding my social media accounts, another very surprising search result was a link to my friend’s Instagram page. My friend’s name is not even close to mine, but Google still provided his Instagram in the search result. This was weird. Looking deeper, I found out Google did this because my friend had tagged me in one of his posts (see Image 3). My thought was that Google must have exhausted its primary searches for ‘kevinzheng17’ and now was looking for any extensions related to ‘kevinzheng17’ which probably pulled in my friend’s Instagram page into the search results. This amazed me as I didn't think that Google had that sort of capability or reach in its search engine.

The remaining search results were again information about other ‘Kevin Zheng’s who were not me. The image results this time also did change, however, but not by much. There were way less images being shown in this search with more of the pictures being related to me than the previous search on just my name.

Image 3: Google search results for 'kevinzheng17'

Searching... 'kevinzhe'

I decided to do one last search, but this time on my school username to see if I could gather specific information regarding my educational background.

When I google ‘kevinzhe’, I actually get nothing at all related to my educational or professional background. I was surprised because this search is probably just as specific as my previous search for ‘kevinzheng17’, but I get absolutely nothing about myself. All the search results instead are for social media profiles of other individuals who use ‘kevinzhe’ as their username. I even narrowed it down to ‘kevinzhe university of michigan’ and still got nothing.

So if Google can’t find me as a student at University of Michigan, then how and why did Google suggest another ‘Kevin Zheng’ who also went to the University of Michigan in my first generic search? Was it purely coincidence?

Searching... 'kevin zheng canton michigan'

Image 1: Google search results for 'kevin zheng canton michigan'

And if not that was not specific enough, let’s do a search on my name plus my hometown. This time, the change in search results were immensely different from the previous search results. Not only did my Twitter and Instagram show up again, but now also my Facebook, LinkedIn, and even my high school swimming profile is now present. So Google finally found me. Right when I thought having a common name protected me from my information being available to the public eye, Google has proved me wrong. Still, it took Google a lot of hints to be able to find me so I am not all too concerned. At this point, if you want to find me online, it seems like you’re going to have to actually know me and my background to do a substantive search on me online. I’m okay with this.

Reflections

My Findings

From these searches, I found that my online identity is not at all a true representation of my real identity considering how little information is available about me. My online identity suggests that I only have a social media presence on various platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, but that I have no other affiliations and that I belong in no other bubble. It fails to capture my personal identity as well as my professional identity such as my hobbies, educational background, personal website, and my LinkedIn profile, all of which I consider to be more important and relevant data to be shared with the world. My online identity overall reflects only the casual aspects of myself rather than my whole self.

As a result, I think I’ve done a good job of keeping my information private for the most part as I found no information online that particularly disturbed me. The only thing that really bothered me was the fact that Google suggested a different ‘Kevin Zheng’ from the same school and all of his online data identity but not mine.

In Summary

I was fully aware that finding Google search results on myself was going to be a challenge. I first began with a generic search and later into more specific searches through various filtering methods. Despite finding a lot more other ‘Kevin Zheng’s than myself, I learned a lot about how easy it is to access information about somebody through a simple Google search. Before now, I never would have thought that a person’s information, both private and public, would be so easily accessible. I feel like most people share the same thought and perhaps don’t even know that some of their own private information is out there for anyone to look up whenever they want.

Even though I didn't find too much information online about me to be concerned about, it’s still a terrifying thought to realize that I, as well as many others, have little to no control over what information is posted online to the public. I never chose or wanted my Twitter account to show up when you Google search my name. I'd rather have something else there especially since the account was literally only meant for class purposes and holds no importance to me.

Afterthoughts

After spending a day conducting various Google searches on myself, I came to the realization that my online identity did not fully portray an authentic version of myself. Is that a bad thing, though? I did end up finding some of my social media accounts, but that was only after an extensive and filtered down search of myself. It does disappoint me, however, that my online identity paints me as an individual with not much influence on the world. When you google someone like “LeBron James” you get so much information about him, but when you do a Google search on me, it just results in other ‘Kevin Zheng’s which makes it seem like they are “more important”. It really makes me feel small, but I’m honestly okay with that I think.

My online identity only provides information about my social life with nothing at all about my academic or personal life as a college student, both of which I consider to be a big part of my current identity. As a student at the University of Michigan, academics have always been a crucial part of my true identity as well as family, friends, hobbies, and other extracurricular activities like my part-time job. Because there are so many people with my name, only very specific searches like searches with my name with my hometown can give valid search results about me and my identity. Other than that, it’s very generalized.