Doing my own Data Mine

 The idea of our online presence being permanent, like a tattoo, is daunting but very, very real, especially with the advent of technologies such as the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. This free service takes "snapshots" of webpages in different points in the Internet's history, so even if you think something online has been deleted or modified, a record of it still exists through archives similar to this. Once you share something online, theoretically anyone could access, save, and re-upload it elsewhere, so there's really no sense of privacy or security online. The general rule to posting online I've followed for the past few years is: if your name can be associated with it, you should expect anyone and everyone to view it. It's the advent of the Internet but also its disadvantage: it links you with potentially anyone in the world, for good or for bad.

With this in mind, I decided to perform a data mine to see how much personal information is out there for the public to access. First, however, I had to define what the "public" was: to do this, I only considered sources that could be accessed without a) making an online account, or b) paying for my information. One of the first sites that popped into my mind that checks both of these boxes (thus available to the public) is Google. Initially I just searched my first and last name (Katie Steffensen) and the results were pretty tame. The first result was a link to my LinkedIn, so anyone searching me could immediately see my previous work and education history. I'm pretty happy with this result because I assume that if anyone is searching for me, it's in a professional capacity (i.e. potential employers searching me before interviewing/hiring). I don't really care if anyone sees my LinkedIn; it's a bit distressing to know anyone could see places I've lived previously, but there's not much I can do about it. 

Image source: Google/Katie Steffensen

My personal Instagram also came up, but since I've privated my account, they couldn't see anything besides my profile picture (same for Facebook). Another Katie Steffensen (living in Minnesota) was the next result; she made up a lot of the following results as she runs her own medical practice, which requires some amount of web promotion. The final result of note was my Flickr account; at a previous position, I photographed for a political campaign, and all of those photos were listed under my first and last name on that account. I had made these photos public for campaign use, and also while creating a portfolio, but now that they're no longer being used, I am wondering if I should make them private. 

The most surprising result from Google was my Etsy account, which was kind of funny. I don't have a storefront on Etsy and mostly use it as a wishlist and to purchase items here and there. I thought it was pretty interesting to think that someone could access my wishlist. It was probably the most accurate look into my personal life out of all the results, since it's comprised of things I'm interested in.

The next site I looked at was Nuwber, which provides free and public access to more personal information (I thought of this more as a search into one's "offline" life, such as addresses, phone numbers, relatives, etc.). The interesting part of this site was, when I searched Katie Steffensen (like I did on Google), I wasn't able to find myself. However, when I switched to my legal first name (Savannah Steffensen), I was the first (and only!) result. This was funny to me considering I never go by this name, and the only place it would be listed is on legal or official government documents, so it makes me wonder where this information is sourced from.

There was so much more personal information listed here, and almost all of it I was uncomfortable seeing public: my birthday, previous phone number, current and previous address, parents and their ages, and links to my Facebook and LinkedIn. I really didn't like having my current address listed, since that meant that anyone who knew my legal name would know where to find me. That brought about a real sense of insecurity, especially considering I didn't know where this information was sourced from. To find more information (which the site is practically begging you to do, as there are links to "find out more" all over the page), Nuwber links to Truthfinder, which to my knowledge was completely behind a paywall, so I didn't bother pursuing it further. The only reassurance I got from this site was that lots of my personal information was only accessible by those who knew my legal name, which I don't share openly. It turns out that by my parents naming me one thing but calling me another, I had a built-in layer of online security! 

Overall the results of this search were pretty enlightening on just how permanent our online presence can be. Photos from nearly 7 years ago were still some of the first image results on Google, and the address I lived at during that time was also freely accessible. Both personal and professional information truly stays online forever. This is definitely an exercise I would introduce to older teens as they prepare to embark on their professional careers. I think teens often assume that if their accounts are private, so is their information, but this exercise shows this is clearly not the case and they definitely need to careful when sharing any information online. It also shows that no matter how careful you are, there is some information (like phone numbers and addresses) that is public no matter what. My initial rule (if your name can be associated with it, you should expect anyone and everyone to view it) does hold up under this scrutiny as well.