A side note: your digital profile

Have you ever tried googling yourself to see what could be found about you? Try looking up a username or maybe that past cringe-worthy username from middle school.  What do you find? What information can someone find out about you?

Fortunately for me, besides on facebook, my name is almost impossible to find on google.  My name and my usernames are too similar to daily life words to find easily.  So it may be fortunate for me for the most part.

However, for many, they do not have this luxury and often times face the ramifications of having an easy to find digital profile.  With the increasingly connected internet, our society will have to face the consequences of having such easily accessible public information.

The Classic Examples

Anyone of employable age all heard the advice, "Be careful of what you put on your facebook! Your employers could find it and use it against you!"  There are also the classic examples where someone pisses off the internet and receive grand retribution for it.  There are also the typical story of stalking and finding their information on facebook and what not.

Even for those that plan carefully for complete anonymity are not complete safe.  In China, there have been instances of internet crowd sourcing in finding different individuals.  Using the collective information of different individuals, they are able to find information that aren't even on the web.  If interested, look up "Human Flesh Search Engine" or 人肉搜索.  

In these cases, you could probably argue that they deserved it (maybe not the stalking).  As long as you do not do anything bad, anonymity is not that big of an issue.  However what happens when it completely isn't the fault of the victim.  Their names happen to be mixed up with someone else due to bad reporting, then what happens?

Mistaken identities

In June 2009, an Iranian woman named Zahra Soltani was shot and killed and became the iconic figure of a demonstration in Iran.  Did I say Zahra Soltani, because the real name of the person who was shot and killed was actually "Neda Agha-Soltan".  Zahra Soltani was a completely different Iranian woman who is still very well alive right now, who just happened to have the nickname of Neda.  The media reported the wrong name  and wrong facebook picture.  As a result, Zahra Soltanihas been harassed by the media, oppositions, and the government.  The Iranian government even claimed there was a conspiracy and "Zahra Soltani" never died.  Well, Zahra obviously never died since it was never supposed to be her in the first place.  To read more, check out the New York Times article on it.

Another story which just happened recently was the tragic CT shooting.  I am sure you are familiar with the shooting and I do not wish to dwell much further on the subject.  However, an unfortunate side story about mistaken identities came through it.  The media reported the name of the wrong brother in the story.  Soon after the wrongly accused brother was flood with facebook messages yelling at him for all the evil that he has done.

Afterthought

These types of events remind me from time to time the vulnerabilities of my information online.  Most likely, these types of events would never happen to me, but you never know.  A bigger concern is more on what kind of information is out there.  What information can other people easily find about me?  For some information, such as my work history on Linkedin, I would love to have employers find out about it.  If I made a very successful blog, I wouldn't mind that as well.  I definitely would not want others to find my middle school blog though.  As for Facebook, there are some information that I wouldn't mind others knowing about, but then some other information that I would rather keep private.  I don't think I have any discriminating information out there, but I'm sure for the risk-adverse like me would rather play it on the safe side.

For now, I can still hide behind the simplicity of my name and being relatively unsearchable on google.  If I become more famous in the future, I will have to control the information that rises to the surface.

A side thought: what type of name should I name my kid?  A common one so no one can find them?  Or a very unique name with a very unique spelling that is easy to find?  The world will definitely be even more connected and digital...