Control your message
I google people.
If I had said this a decade ago, you would have thought that I was confessing to something akin to being a peeping tom or voyeur. But today, everyone reading this knows that I am telling you that I look people up on google to see what the internet says about them. If you have ever done or said anything on-line, (or if anyone has done or said anything that references you on-line) it can be found. And it will be by someone at some time. Don’t let this on-line first impression be random or worse, in someone else’s control.
Privacy verses Anonymity
I see some of you out their squirming to write something back in defence of privacy that you think you have a right to. I am sorry to be the one to tell you, privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. There are parts of your life and data that the law will protect. Most of it is fair game. (And game is the right word.)
Somewhere it got into our conciousness that if we use handles like “RubberDuck21″ or “CyberToad69″ that no one would know who we were, and we would be anonymous on the internet. That sitting at home in your PJs, you can go on-line and create whole new, disposable, and untraceable identities. That what you do on-line is somehow protected and private and anonymous. Well this has always been false.
Going on-line with an alias of “CyberToad69″ is just as anonymous as putting on a mask and going to a Halloween party. It works until you start talking. But as soon as you open your mouth, you start giving yourself away. This means that if you go on-line, and shop, chat, blog, tweet, or search, there is data stored that makes a profile of you. This profile was not created by the penetrating act of hacking and ID theft, it is just a gathering of information that you gave away, freely.
How to find People
Have you ever googled yourself? If not you should. You may have to use more than your name, especially if you are a John or Sarah. There are some other Roy Hayward out there. One is is a hairdresser in the UK. He takes the number one spot on google for my name. But he is not me, and no one is really confused. When I google people, I generally have a few bits of information in addition to a name.
When you talk to someone on the bus or the plane, most people learn one or more places that you have lived. We volunteer this information in casual conversation. When we volunteer information we are surrendering some of our privacy.
So now we have at least the state, and most times the city. Most meeting give away a few other things like gender and ethnicity. Also if we have a family, etc. If you are a professional, you may give out your industry and even your employer. With these small and common pieces of information, it becomes obvious that I am not the Roy Hayward in the UK, but the Roy Hayward in Utah. It works the same for you.
Armed with this information, people like myself go to google.com and search for people they wish to know more about. People we have met, and want to do business with in some fashion. I generally find out what I need and want to know; “Is this person real?” ” Are they who and what they said they were?” Are the questions that I am answering. When my daughters start dating I may go for the criminal background check, but that costs money.
Now I can see some of you starting to go through a bit of paranoia. That is unnecessary. There is nothing wrong with this, and withholding your name at dinner parties will make them less fun. So relax.
Control your Message
The real question and purpose of this article is to let you ask yourself this question; “What do people find when they look for me?” Yes we are back to googling ourselves. If you are a member of an on-line community or social network like LinkedIN or Facebook, if you have a MySpace page or a blog, you should want people to be able to find those. They tell who you are. They tell your story. You get to control the message. There is going to be data out there that will include you, so be apart of it.
Now there are also some things that you should be cautious of. Even if you purchase ID theft protection, posting you birthday, social security numbers and bank account information is probably bad. Intimate details of medical conditions in the wrong forum might be bad. You should used your judgement here. There are lots of blogs out and about being safe on-line, so I won’t go into exhaustive detail here. (but you should google them if you want to ready about online safety.)
What do you do?
Now here is the question. What do you do? (or want to do but haven’t had the time yet.) I have a LinkedIN profile, a Facebook and Blog. I haven’t done MySpace yet. I just haven’t gotten around too it. If you look me up, I am not the hair dresser from the UK, he can have the top spot, but I am in the top 5. There is also Twitter where you can follow me and other around. What methods do you use to promote your information on the internet? Remember, there will be information about you out there, so you might as well control some of it.
Originally published on BlogCritics.com, Jan 10th 2008, updated here Oct 20th, 2009.
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