Self Stalking

While exploring my internet identity on an unbiased computer, there were a few things that I was happy about and a few things that I found alarming. Initially, I thought that I would find way more information about myself because each time I have had to look myself up in the past, I was searching from my computer, which led to results that are predicted to fit what I was looking for due to my search history over the years. However, while using a separate computer, I found that there were a lot more relevant Scott Leopold's out there besides me. When googling myself (standard searches that included different entries of my name) I did not pop up on any relevant pages (first three pages of Google). When I got more in depth with my searches, entries that included my hometown and high school, I found multiple links that brought up scores of tennis matches from high school, a link about an academic achievement in high school, and a bunch of links that had my parents name instead of mine.

When searching my name on Google to find myself on social media sites, I was very happy to see that I have done a great job keeping myself private. Not only were my pages hard to find, each time I clicked on a link that was mine, my account was private and no outside user could see my information. I have made a conscious effort over the years to ensure this would happen and I am glad to see that it is. I believe that keeping social media accounts private is very important to ensure that personal information and daily activities are kept to yourself and your friends only, not the entire world to see. My accounts for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are all private and cannot be accessed without my permission.

However, although I found many positive aspects of searching myself, I did find some things that were very alarming. Starting with the White Pages search, I first provided my cell phone number. Instantly, my cell phone carrier was provided along with the area I live in (Philadelphia instead of my actual town). Things became more alarming when I entered my home phone number, as results appeared with my home address, phone provider, my mom, dad, brother and myself (it did not have my sister). I don't like how my address and phone number is readily available for anyone to have because many bad situations can arise from that. Besides the my number and address being so available, I was not really worried with anything else because all of the other information I found was so broad and general that it was related to the area that I live in or had nothing to do with me at all.