I keep reading in articles (which are generally meant to scare “regular people”) about how you should limit the personal information you reveal to websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. A friend of mine, when job hunting, even password protected his website and requested cached pages be removed from various engines.
Couple this with some recent posts I’ve seen about people search engines (which love to say they search the “deep web”) getting better at aggregating this information, I decided it was the time to see what was out there about me.
So armed with my name, an email address, and the name of the town I live in (none of which is too hard to track down), I decided to see what I could find out about myself out there on the tubes. The results surprised me.
My first stop was pipl.com, which can search by email, name (with city/state), username or phone. Pipl searches various social networking sites, as well as common web resources. From MySpace, it claimed that I live in Cranston, RI (not true—and I told it so in my search) and that I am a serious Goth who is a Guitar Hero fanboy (not true. OK, I do enjoy a little Guitar Hero). It pulled up my LinkedIn profile accurately enough, and some other true info.
When I searched Pipl by email address, oddly, I got back an error that said “No results found for <redacted>@comcast.net.” The interesting thing is that the comcast.net address isn’t remotely close to what I typed in. So I tried it again, and this time it found no results for “Masongeary.” Apparently, this is what others are searching on (I contacted Pipl and within the hour they responded that the issue was resolved). The third time, it actually pulled up some old mail list posts that were mine. They can’t even keep your search query straight, let alone the info about you.
Next up, I tried 123people.com. This one pulls back pictures of “me”… interesting:
Think I’m in there? Think again (though one of those faces looks oddly familiar…hmmm...). They also got some info correct, but added to my online persona that I’m an indoor track runner (nope, sorry) and a soccer player (nope, sorry again). Apparently, I like to upload videos to YouTube (which I’ve never done).
Next up was Spokeo. This site has a special section for HR Recruiters… interesting. It claims I have three social networks, and I can tell that one of them is correct—but the other two I’m not sure about. It wants greenbacks to tell me for sure, so there’s where my experiment ends with this site.
I tried several others. Zoominfo.com says I worked at “Massachusetts Maritime.” Isearch.com thinks I may live in Nashville, Los Angeles, or perhaps my name is actually “Lil Chris.” Spock.com suggests I own a spa or maybe a law firm.
And The Google? Well, it makes some of those same mistakes… and the image search is no better than 123people.com’s (it pulled up a bunch of other guys, including a high-jumper—yeah right!).
So what’s the point of all this? Good question. Some of the information I found out about me is true, and some of it I never knew—I’m actually beginning to feel a little like Ed Norton in Fight Club. Armed with my email address and/or name, what would a recruiter or hiring manager think they found out about me? It’s not news to me that there is a high concentration of the “Sullo” surname in New England (where I am also from), so confusion seems highly likely. As a matter of fact, I once unexpectedly found myself on a conference call with another Chris Sullo (from NY) who also works in security, if you can believe it. Could some other “Chris Sullo” have an impact on a future job prospect? Could I have a negative impact on him (this seems more likely)?
What about identity theft? Sure, some breaches only have a tiny bit of info, but… how much more do they need when your address is out there, your mom’s maiden name is on Geni, and your date of birth and names of y our kid/dog are proudly displayed on Facebook?
The privacy advocate in me (which generally rules the roost) is thrilled there is a bunch of confusion. However, as the web gets “deeper” and more information moves online (President Obama’s digital healthcare initiative, anyone?), this is going to be a larger and larger problem. If we’re not careful about the data we give out to public sources, it will be relatively easy for someone to gather enough information to commit fraud or, at the least, impact decisions on jobs and security clearances.
Maybe it’s time I start using a different email address for each web site? A service to do this sort of thing (with less pain than doing it manually) and aggregate my mail would be nifty.
For now, I’m just going to change my bio to read: Chris Sullo, the high-jumping, soccer playing, track running, spa and law firm owning, Guitar Hero loving Goth who goes by “Lil Chris” and may or may not live in Los Angeles, Cranston or Nashville, and could work at either Massachusetts Maritime or Hewlett-Packard.
Posted
01-22-2009 2:29 PM
by
Chris Sullo