Seth Wickham
Contents
Pre-search predictions
Going into the search, I'll be completely honest, I thought I would find basically everything about myself. Maybe the pendulum had swung so much to that side since I had grown up during the time where everyone was warning you 24/7 that whatever you post will be online forever. Upon one of my first searches, there was a website called "public voter records" and prior to clicking on it, I wasn't even thinking I'd be surprised if my votes were public online. That's how pessimistic I was toward my online data privacy.
Growing up, I was not one of the cool kids that were allowed access to Facebook in sixth grade (2011 when I first remember hearing about the website amongst friends). My parents were always conscious of my online profile. My father, being a police officer, was very uptight and concerned for my safety on these sites. My mother was more so concerned for my character, she was afraid of me posting dumb stuff (which I would later prove her right). I was also only allowed to use 2 social media sites at a time. In high school, I became intrigued with Twitter but was informed by my mother that it would cost me my Facebook or Instagram. So, that addition was halted until my college years.
Because of how I grew up, I have always had my accounts as private as possible. I limit my Facebook content only to be viewed by immediate friends, I have Instagram set to where accounts must request to follow me to see my content, and the same went for twitter until I deleted it this summer.
Yet even with all these privacy roadblocks, I still believed that I could be able to find just about all my posts on google. I thought my embarrassing content from my middle school years would be on display for the world to see. It's one of the reasons I have never really done anything like this, I searched my name in google a few years ago, like any bored high school student has done, but I didn't remember how much came up, and I know that I certainly didn't go as in-depth in my searching then as I did this time around.
The search
Going into the search, I decided to use incognito mode through my Google Chrome browser so that it would be as close as possible to a search from someone that isn't me. I decided to go from vague searches, to as detailed as possible. Examples include:
Seth Wickham
Seth Wickham Milford
Seth Nathaniel Robb Wickham Milford
Seth Nathaniel Robb Wickham Milford instagram
Seth Nathaniel Robb Wickham Milford @seth_wick3 instagram
...
The findings
Personal Data
At first, my previous predictions seemed to be proved accurate, as the website "michiganresidentdatabase.com" basically told me my entire demographic picture. I found my birth year, family members, neighbors, voter id, address, school district, etc. All without even having to pay a fee. It was eerily accurate and up to date. It even included the date I registered to vote.
