How "deep" can someone "Google" you !!

A few days ago while I was browsing the internet for some geeky stuff, I found a t-shirt, quoting the following:

"Sometimes when I am alone...

I Google myself..."

While the one-liner was supposedly funny and I guess the time it was written, I am sure that the person who wrote it wouldn've thought of 'Googling ' yourself as something that a totally jobless fellow does in his free time when (s)he couldn't think of anything else to do... well whatever, that's not the point. The point is, Googling yourself : is it a joke anymore? I am sure, all of us have already Googled ourselves at least once! Or if someone hasn't, he/she will do it sometime soon.

Having said that, as usual, like most of the other things, the statement "I Google myself" triggered a thought and I decided to do a bit of experimenting to investigate how much am I or anyone else is exposed online by mere Googling !! And this is how it went:

Googling Myself...

This was simple ! All I needed to do was a google search with my name and surname.

Any prerequisites?

Yes !!

1. My name (thank god, like all other names, I've never forgotten this one) and

2. Internet , to which, by the way I am connected almost 24x7.

If you're thinking I should probably stop beating around the bushes and come to the pointless point which no one cares about.. I am coming to that.

So, when I hit the return key, there it was!!! I was at first kind of disappointed when I saw a line saying:

Did you mean: Swapnil Divekar

I must admit that I was jealous because google thinks my last name is a mistake, but it was okay when I saw that I have a full page of results dedicated to my name. I may not be the first person people are Googling, but then I have one full page. Yay !!

Where do I live on the web?

Alright, once I had a full page with my name, it was time to look into my whereabouts on the internet. Results were basically categorized into 3 types.

1. Profiles on social/Professional networking sites, google profile etc. : These include results from Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, Twitter.com, Orkut.com so on and so forth. It was worth noting that I was also listed into other people's social networking profiles since I was in their network. (I will talk about this later)

2. Personal blog or a website: This is probably everyone's hoping for, that is, getting your blog or website listed in Google search results. I was happy that I had my blog(s) listed in the result.

3. References on school/college websites, discussion forums etc.: This was kind of unexpected, because I was unaware that I was being watched by Google when I was posting a comment on some technical forum or seek some help from online experts or was taking and appointment with professor for project discussion on the class wiki.

Going deeper into it

This is where the real fun begins. I started following the links one by one.

1. Facebook: When I clicked the Facebook link, the first thing I and anyone else probably would notice is my display picture on Facebook. Not only that, pics of random friends belonging to my network were listed. Along with that, other things like, the groups I have joined, the apps I use, the games I play, they were all listed. Isn't that cool?

No, it isn't. I'll tell you why..but later.

2. LinkedIn: Getting listed here was pretty much acceptable, because I want people (and by people, I mean potential employer) to view my "public" profile on LinkedIn. Although, I think that my public profile on LinkedIn should be pretty much visible from LinkedIn and it would be okay if it doesn't get listed in Google search results.

3. Google Profile: This was a fairly new thing. Probably, this result is included in the search result ever since I started using Google Buzz. I don't mind being listed here, the only thing I disliked about the profile is, it is displaying the thumbnails of my 'non-public' picasa web album. And as a matter of fact, since my blogs are linked to my Google profile, the page is listing the link to this post.

4. My Blogs: While the links to this thing is present on every social networking site I use, Google search includes a link to my both blogs and in turn access to my blogger profile from which one can also see what blogs I am following, what am I reading, how many and what people are following my blog, so on and so forth.

5. Twitter: Search result includes a link to my Twitter account and also my username on twitter. Once I followed that link, I can see my recent tweets, which also means, I could see what I've been doing in past few days. Is it good or bad? Again, I am going to address this soon.

6. Miscellaneous: This includes the traces I left on discussion boards, school/ class website and all other places where appearing in google search was the last thing on my mind. Anyways, to sum up: it's not necessary that you're in google search result only when you intend to !!

What does this mean? (a.k.a Son of a %$^%$^ or WTF)

To sum everything up very quickly, as I just said: I was in the search results sometimes expectedly and sometimes unexpectedly. Suppose I spend half an hour researching about myself (or anyone else) on Google, this is what probably I am going to end up with.

1. Full name of a person (already known). Any nicknames/ usernames associated (e.g. myself on twitter or some discussion board, blog etc.)

2. Photo : From Facebook and/or from Twitter and/or from blogger profile and/or from Google profile.

3. Age: From any or all sources listed above.

4. Address: At least the country and at most the city from any or all of the profiles above.

5. Occupation: I could find this thing from my blogger profile, but I am sure that there are many people like me, who didn't think about exposing this info. about themselves while putting it on sites like these. And of course, if you have a LinkedIn profile, you're totally nude when it comes to info like this. LinkedIn shows my occupation, my university, places/employers I've worked at/for. Places and institutions I've studied at.

6. Institution: LinkedIn or Blogger profile is the best source to get this info

7. Activities: It was very easy to track down my own activities from my blog, my twitter account, my Google profile and all other possible sources.

When I collected all this info about myself (technically called as information harvesting), I totally found myself in WTF!!! situation. I was astonished that one can find out so much about me, just by knowing my name. And the kind of info one would have about me before even meeting/talking to me will be my name, age, occupation, where do I live broadly, where do I study or studied, where do I work, how much experience do I have in whatever I do, what are my interests and hobbies, some random friends and their info, what have I been doing lately (from status updates etc), my way of thinking (from my blog), my interests, my hobbies etc etc etc....

Of course, some of this was intended. I mean, I want few things about me to be public and so I don't mind them being listed anywhere, but what freaks me out is when someone can google me and see what have I been upto from my tweets or status updates or blog entries. When someone can find my email address and email me whatever they want. When someone knows about my friend circle and possibly can get same info about them too. And if that wasn't enough, when someone can find my name's reference on my class wiki and find out what class I attend at what time and what project was I doing for the class and what time and date and where am I supposed to meet my professor. Maybe this is a rare instance, but I am sure that plenty of such will follow in the future and it's not only about me, but everyone who's like me. This makes me think that isn't it a reason to be afraid of the power of web? Is it growing beyond our control? If yes, how can I tame it.

Solutions???

Yes, there is one for sure. You can probably make all your profiles and stuff private, post on blogs and in discussion forums with fake names/usernames etc. In other words - create a fake identity on the web and if you are as forgetful about the usernames and passwords as I am, forget about social networking, discussion forums etc. Make your profiles private with the risk of a friend or a potential employer not being able to find you.

Having this said, the question again arises in my mind that how many of us have really cared about making their tweets or display pictures private when we were creating a profile on a social networking website. If I assume that rest of the world is as 'normal' as I am (read normal as not paranoid) , they would've also not cared about this thing when they created a profile somewhere or put too much info on sites like LinkedIn, assuming that it will give them an edge over other candidates.

I do not know or have experienced the usefulness of putting info on LinkedIn or something similar. But as quoted by Keith Harris (who is a senior recruiter with Google) at a Resume and Interviewing workshop at SDSU, putting "as much info as possible" on sites like LinkedIn helps a lot in terms of getting a job. While I am not against putting as much info as possible on the web, I am sort of against this info being listed in random search results and getting into the hands of an unintended person or so called wrong hands. This is specially true when the person being exposed in such a way is driven by certain motives (like job search) and tends to put whatever info possible without caring about the consequences (for example : someone making the phone number/email public so that employer can contact him/her on phone or email).

While I support the theory that one is responsible for his own privacy and should be careful about it, search engines and social networking are contributing equally to it. I have started expecting a time when social networking websites etc become the prime source of spams, scams and information harvesting. While I can be extra cautious about it or be in a "who cares about me" mode, I can think of someone else like me being stuck into this dual mind where he/she has to find a perfect balance between possible opportunity and possible exposure.

Moral of the story: "Think twice before using the term Google Me, you might be more naked on the web than you think you are"

Disclaimer:

1. I realized that I've made many reference to professional networking site LinkedIn but that was in no way the whole point of discussion and rather LinkedIn was just an example and I do not intend to criticize or doubt the utility of the website.

2. The only link in this post (link to the LinkedIn profile of Mr. Keith Harris was just an example to show how easily I can start collecting information about a person. And since he was the only person I mentioned in here, it had to be the link to his profile. There's nothing personal about it. )