Have you ever Googled yourself?
Were you surprised by anything you found?
by
ohcheri
asked 8 months ago
Only in complete privacy.
All the time when I am looking at your website @ohcheri.
Well that's interesting, I haven't googled myself in years. I used to at least have a few hits for my self on the front page. Now nothing had to go 12 pages in before I found something that was actually me.
This internet thing has clearly gone too mainstream time to find a new addiction.
Yeah I do from time to time. It's sort of like looking at a time capsule of my life--high school newsletter, college events, journal publications and so on. Kind of cool. As far as I know only one other person has my name, so most everything that shows up is about me.
My given name is Betsy Ross so it makes it difficult.
Not without lotsa @loubriccant!
yep, sure have - i found my mug shot and a warrant for not paying fines, which i HAD paid - turns out they didn't record it correctly - i've contacted them but the pic is still there to this day
I have in the past and the top results are mostly me, including those creepy "pay us to find out this person's address etc" sites.
The most surprising result I've seen is that someone wrote a novel and the main character shares my name.
I do all the time, since in my business people will basically always Google me before hiring. Gotta keep close track of what things pop up.
Doesn't help having a very unique name either... everything that comes up when my name is Googled is about me. Heck, every single person in the USA with my last name (about 10 of them) I'm related to.
Luckily (knock on wood) thus far in life I've been pretty good making sure nothing that reflects poorly pops up.
Yes.
My middle and last name were my father's full name (he had no middle name). The first time I tried this long ago, I found a link to a geneology website that had a list of the graves at the Fulton Presbyterian Church in Greer, South Carolina (where my mother and father are buried).
Frequently. As others have said, I check up on it for professional purposes, to see what else might be online connected to my name. I have a fairly common last name, and a very common first name (one of the two is often also used for the other, too), which means there are a lot of hits if I do a free search for just my first and last names. If I put it into quotations, it becomes a little more specific.
Oddly enough one of the first specific hits for "firstname middleinitial last_name" for me is a news group post I made several years ago. Thankfully it was a post I made, to a software newsgroup, so it is nothing that could come to harm me.
I also do "firstname lastname" plus stateIlivein or cityIlivein to see what else I can find, those usually work pretty well, as well as "firstname lastname" plus current_occupation.
I also check the logs on my web server to see how often people reach my web page looking for me - in comparison to finding it by looking for content.
As for surprises; I have found several people in interesting places who have my first name and my last name - none of whom I am related to, to the best of my knowledge:
A fishing guide in North Carolina
A musician
An Ob/Gyn
An author
A rodeo cowboy
... none of which are even close to my profession.
I do, every few months anyway. Long, long ago I worked for a political action organization dealing with a fairly volatile issue, and I like to keep an eye out for where my name may surface. I don't want any surprises in my workplace or on my doorstep. Recently a well-read national ezine did a lengthy article on a 20-year-old event, and I was mentioned fairly prominently through much of it. (Too bad the author didn't contact me directly; I'm easy enough to find, and I could have helped him with his lack of accuracy on historical points.)
What has surprised me the most, though, is that a name I thought might be relatively uncommon isn't: two of us in my city use the same eye doctor.
Considering the rarity of my name, a search generally turns up only a few hundred results. Fortunately, they're all about me and none have me looking like a bad person.
update!! my pic and info is now gone.....!!! YAY!!!!
Yes, and I didn't like what I found. To much information available to everyone else. :(
I just heard about spokeo - went there and the information on me was enormous including a huge photo of my home, their guess as to financial worth, etc. I opted out, which you can do, but who knew.
I go by first name, middle initial, last name. Oddly enough, there is someone who lives in the same city as me with the same first name, middle initial, last name. Sometimes his information will come up in a Google search. It's strange to think that he's another me living a completely different life.
@klozitshoper: I had never heard of spokeo until your mention. I checked it and it seems spooky. How do I opt out? I didn't see an easy way...
What is really scary sometimes is looking up past/present/future addresses.
I was looking at buying one house, and it turned out to be a 'murder-house'.
I crossed that one off of the list fast.
I just Googled my name. 4,070,000 results in .21 seconds. Pretty common name I guess.
Here's something funny: The first thing that shows up on Google under my name is some kind of evil alien kidnapping research group.
Sure, plus I have Google google me (set a Google alert for my name). I'm the only one of my name around, so it works. It can be very helpful to see what the search results are, and which ones earn prime ranking when.
There are 51 people in the US with my same first and last name. I have 4 pages of just me on google using an old screen name. From my forum mod comments to yahoo answers.
Spokeo has two of me in the same town, my old address from 2 1/2 years ago and my present one.
@betsygirl801: Any relation to the Betsy Ross of flag legend?
Many of times. Its the best way to find stuff you may have posted many years ago, and get it removed. Every year or so I try to do it again to see if anything pops up. Google my real name and my online name.
Periodically. I do genealogy research so my name pops up here and there.
BUT HOLY COW! I just googled for the first time in a while and someone else has my same first and last name! My first & last names are both unusual so finding the same name is astounding!
fortunately, Andrew Johnson in east Tennessee only pulls up stuff for Greenville, TN (birthplace of the 17th President, Andrew Johnson). I'm sure there is a result in there somewhere pertaining to me, but good luck finding it
@gretchena: YAY indeed!
One of the very first things an investigator does is to put your name into google (and other search engines). If your social security is known, then it's also a walk in the park to look you up in Lexis Nexis, and you'd be unpleasantly surprised to see who has access, and how much information is there.
Sites like Spokeo are nothing more than amalgaters, scraping sites such as Facebook, LinkeIn, and MySpace, and public records (DMV, Voting, Property Tax), among others. I often used to use Zabasearch to start with, when researching a person. I just looked for Betsy Ross in New York State, and there were only nine. Not as common a name as you'd think.
I watch for my real name on the internet, now and then. Even though it's somewhat unusual, there are at least four people of my approximate age with the same name including initial. I'm an essentially private person, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.
@jsimsace:
1) Go to Spokeo dot com.
2) Search your name and select the profile that matches your information.
3) Once you've determined that you've located your profile you can then highlight and copy the URL.
4) Find and click on the privacy link on the bottom of the page.
5) Paste your URL into the appropriate field, enter your email address, and the provided security code.
6) Click on remove listing.
@klozitshoper: Holy crap I had never heard of that site either. Waaay creepier than Google. I can't wait to opt out! Thank for the heads up!!
@shrdlu: You are the go to person for internet security I think. Spokeo, Google are ok, but I am sure there is such a vast amount of information under our real names out there, it would cause us to keep looking to see who is following. I cannot figure out how such a really close up photo of my home including a friend's car in my driveway with a readable license plate could show up, but it did.
I hadn't done this for a while, so I tried with my first and last name and a second time with my middle initial. I get my Facebook and Google+ profiles, journal articles I have authored, material from conferences I spoke at, and links to patents I am involved with.
All in all, I'm pretty awesome on Google!!!
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- 8 months ago
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- ohcheri
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