Megha Jain
My Online Identity
I was curious to explore what my current online identity is. I know that I have control over what I choose to share through my social media accounts, but how much control do I have over what search engines like "Google" and data broker websites like "Instant Checkmate" are programmed to associate with my name?
When searching my name on Google, I expected to find at least a couple results that directly pertained to me, considering that I am averagely active on social media and that I have an uncommon name. However, just searching "Megha Jain" produced no pictures, websites or accounts that represented my personal data - in fact, I looked through the first ten pages of Google results and found no trace of myself. When I tried searches adding my hometown as well as "umich" after my name, I was able to find more results that represented what I believed to be my online identity. Adding my hometown produced my LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, work experiences like my recent internship and my hometown First Aid Squad, and images of me leading a protest in high school. Adding "umich" finally produces an identity that feels close to my 20-year old self. Although the second result belongs to a university Professor who shares a similar name (whose emails I receive quite frequently due to our similar uniqnames), the top results include my LinkedIn profile, an article on my run for CSG, organizations that I am a part of, and my major.
Instant Checkmate
When accessing data broker website "Instant Checkmate" , the amount of information it promised to provide me coupled with the fact that I had to pay to access the data report they produced made me nervous as to how much information they would be able to find out about me. Was my personal information including my phone number, location, assets, work experience, licenses really so easily accessible? As the website continued to "extensively search their public records", I thought about my multiple social media accounts and how much information I put out into the online world without realizing. I was pleasantly surprised when Instant Checkmate could pull almost no information about me. Although they had found my date of birth, my star sign, my address, and my facebook account, their records had given me a middle initial even though I have no middle name. This left the rest of their data empty as they were searching for someone- associated with their initial information- that does not exist.
