Self-Stalking

On my geodemographic search, I found a lot about my hometown, but almost nothing about myself. Typing in my phone number on White Pages brought up my cell carrier and city, but AT&T in Chicago is a very vague descriptor. When I searched my home phone, however, both my parents, their ages and our home address came up. Fact Finder and the New York Times Mapping America project brought up similar statistics for my hometown (predominantly [~60%] black  and white [~35%] ethnicities, very high high school graduation rate [~90%], a wide range of household income and property values, and about half of elementary students in private schools). These statistics on my hometown were very interesting because as I am used to seeing city-wide results, I enjoyed learning about my own neighborhood by entering a specific zip code.

I found absolutely nothing about myself in my social network analysis. Ten Mary Sullivans show up on a (not signed in) Facebook search, none of them being me. I also searched my email and could not find myself. My LinkedIn profile does not come up on a simple search either, but it does when I search “Mary Sullivan Madison”. I can see my school, work and activity experience, school, major and my picture. Twitter brings up nothing for my name or email, but you could see my whole profile if you knew my username.

On Google, there were several thousand pages of Mary Sullivan results. The most reoccurring theme is the “Boston Strangler”, which was a serial killer in the 1960s. Mary Sullivan was his last victim and they just found her DNA results in 2013. There are many writers (Childerens’ books, romance novels), a few doctors and a bunch of Facebook profiles (but none of them were me). Similar results came up on different variations of my name, even when I included my uncommon middle name, Virginia. When I searched my email address, more “Boston Strangler” stories came up, which worried me a little bit. When I searched my phone number, all the search results were in Russian.

The only way I found results for myself was if I typed “Mary Sullivan UW Madison”. When I entered this, my LinkedIn profile as well as my Jonk Music (the blog I contribute to) “about me” page came up. When I added “Daily Cardinal” or “Jonk Music” with my name in my search, all of my published articles came up.

I’m pretty happy, actually, that I’m so difficult to find on the internet. I get worried by the ease at which stalkers and hackers can obtain information, so I’m glad I’m somewhat safe from them. This is probably the only time I’ve ever been thankful to my parents for giving me a very average and unoriginal name.