User:Yukifang

My Data Identity

Google Search

When I did a google search of my name, the first result that popped up was a makeup artist on Instagram with the same name. She has over a 1000 followers so it makes sense to me she’s on the top as I have not made myself well known for anything yet. However, I was surprised when the second link that popped up was my LinkedIn account. There were several Yuki Fangs but mine appeared first – even in incognito mode. The third result was a Facebook profile but it was not mine. Fourth was a Twitter account that was also not mine. But fifth was a Devpost page that linked back to my old hackathon projects. After browsing several more pages, I noticed there were several results with coding related websites. My social media accounts were nowhere near the top of Google’s results but many of my coding profiles and projects were within the first two pages - GitHub, Kaggle, and HackerEarth were all on the second result page. I study Computer Science and have built several projects before so I’m not extremely surprised to find my name linked to them, but I am surprised about mostly finding coding-related information to myself.

Google Images

Upon first glance, there were many pictures of anime characters as my name is a common Japanese name in anime. There were also many pictures of wedding hairstyles because the most well-known Yuki Fang is a makeup artist. Here and there, you see different Asian girls with my name but surprisingly, there were no current nor old pictures of me – and I scrolled till the very bottom of the page. The only image that related to me was linked to a research project I’m working on with my professor right now, and it wasn’t a picture of me but the project itself.

Data Broker

Using BeenVerified, a data scraping site, the report only found 2 correct pieces of information about me – my address and home phone number. My birth date and year was wrong – apparently I’m 31 years old right now. My mobile number is wrong. And everything else was blank. I feel kind of glad as they couldn’t find any information about my relatives or linked me to false criminal charges, but I do have to admit that I’m a bit underwhelmed about the information they found.

Transparency Speculation

It’s interesting how when I search Google for my name, I can find information linking back to myself but none of that information is on the data broker report. I have several social media accounts so I wouldn’t say I have a lack of digital presence, but many of them are not under my real name and are very inactive so I speculate that’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to find the “one” me. I also deleted my Instagram a few months back, privated my Facebook around the same time, and deleted my profile picture on both accounts so that might have helped too.

Conclusion

It’s definitely scary that I can find so much information about myself by doing a simple Google Search because anyone can see the same things I see about myself. Even though several data brokers couldn’t find much information about me, it goes to show that we can limit our presence online if we watch out for what information we leak about ourselves: photos we post, not using our real name in every account. Of course this is much harder to control when there are articles written about you or you’re a mini celebrity, but if you’re worried about the information people can find about you, there are definitely steps anyone can take to reduce it.

Honestly, the reason I don’t have any profile picture is not because I don’t want people to find me, but because I’m just super self-conscious about my face. I don’t have a Instagram anymore not because I don’t want pictures of me online, but because I feel I’m comparing myself to people too often – which made me hate on my own insecurities. I guess being super-conscious of your identity and how you’re represented online can be a good thing – add reading? (somewhere earlier)