What would I find if I Googled You?

Think about it for a moment, if I or anyone else were to Google you what would we find? Would we find blogs where you are talking about family, friends or perhaps even a rant about the boss or really irritating coworker? So, go ahead, Google yourself, I’ll wait. Oh, and don’t forget to Google any alias’s you use, either. Were you surprised by what you found?

So what did you find? Did you find more personal information than you realized? Did you find those blog posts you forgot about and wish you had never made? Did you find any photos you didn’t realize a friend had posted? Did you find enough information that someone could impersonate you or approach people you know under the guise of a friend?

Consider too the image all that information portrays. Take a good look, but from the eyes of someone who doesn’t know you and is basing their opinion strictly from the information on the internet. If a complete stranger were to look at this information, what type of image would he/she form? Why am I asking this?

Because I had someone (that I had recently met) tell me, “I Googled you and found you’re blogs.” I didn’t think anything about it because I have Googled myself and seen everything that had come up before. But later I started to think about it and it led to this question, “If you were to take all the information and create an impression based on that information alone, what type of person am I?” Am I someone you want to know? I you were an employer, would want to hire me? Am I the type of person I would want for a friend?

Am I trying to scare you so much that you want to run screaming and never touch a computer? No, that is not my purpose. I want to be aware as we start creating accounts and putting information on the web that we are actually putting pieces of ourselves on the web and once it is out there you can’t get it back.