Techssocial | Getting information about people is now possible in just a few clicks. At some point, you may have used Google to find someone, too.
You can simply type a person’s name, and tons of information about them will appear before you: their email address, location, occupation, and more. The internet has become an enormous database, useful for finding a long-lost friend, getting familiarized with someone you are about to meet, or verifying someone’s identity. More so, businesses mainly check online sources to find or check prospective hires and candidates.
As long as it’s ethical and for legal purposes, conducting research on people is allowed on the internet. However, there have been instances that the information available online has been used for malicious intents. With personal data being easily accessible nowadays, many people fall victim to stalking, identity theft, harassment, phishing, and other cyberattacks. Personal data has also become precious today, that businesses fight and pay a lot to get access to it.
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How Personal Information Is Exposed
Once you share your personal information with a website or a company, it is stored on the internet. Every activity you engage with online leaves a digital footprint. Whether you post a comment on a blog, share a post, like a tweet, subscribe to a mailing list, all of it creates data points creating your online identity.
In some unfortunate instances, your data can be used or sold without your consent. Mainly, data brokers collect data to sell it, either as a people-search engine, for marketing purposes or cybersecurity functions like fraud detection. More so, many companies are also getting creative, crafting methods that may enable them to collect user data.
This is why you should be cautious when sharing your data or doing anything over the internet. Because once your data is out there, it can be found by others one way or another.
People can look someone up online in various ways:
1. General Search via Search Engines
The most basic way to look someone up is to type their name on a search engine. Google search has been primarily used, but other engines arguably provide relevant results, like Bing and Yandex. Some engines even give extra security by not keeping a user’s search history, like DuckDuckGo that does not store personal data, and Startpage that retrieves Google search results without having Google track who is searching.
Search engines are instrumental in locating someone as a single piece of information can easily lead you to who you are looking for. When searching, using a combination of information like name plus location or date of birth can yield more specific results. Searching people through multiple search engines can also help someone piece information together.
2. Social Media Search
Another common way to easily find a person is through social media sites. Social media sites are made up of personal profile pages with various types of information. Interaction through the platform, like communicating with people and brands or publishing locations, also serves as key data points. Social media can easily reveal the people associated with a certain individual, like colleagues, friends, and family.
Facebook is among the most common platforms where valuable and even sensitive personal information can be found. Facebook holds your data and can leverage it to their benefit. More so, anyone can get information as displayed on profiles, or in the unfortunate event of a cyberattack, the personal data can be accessed, leaked, and exposed.
3. Online Phone Directories
Yellowpages, the enormous book of phone numbers, is now obsolete. Still, some websites work as a directory of people and phone numbers, made easily searchable like White pages or Fast People Search.
For businesses and professional services, DexKnows is a good example of a phonebook directory. Moreover, businesses’ legal details are published and accessible on government sites like U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where people can also search and browse to find business owners and investors.
4. People Search Engines
As there is a digital service for almost everything, there is one for searching people. There are websites specifically designed to confidentially rummage the internet to look for a person’s information from social media, public records, news articles, blogs, and others. With this, they collate the data like a person’s location, email address and phone numbers, and other people associated with them.
Some commonly used sites are Spokeo, TruePeopleSearch, Family Tree Now, and FamilySearch.org. Most of these sites provide basic information like name and address upon searching. However, they might require you to open an account or pay a fee to get full access to all the details therein.
5. Paid Services for Searching People
Along with the mentioned people search engines, there are also paid services specifically for finding people and verifying identity. Such services are often targeted for businesses, banking, crime investigation, and others.
Among the most trusted people-finding services includes Pipl, Truthfinder, and Intelius. These sites can provide in-depth and detailed results, including a person’s social media accounts, criminal records, and other sensitive details. They all require a monthly subscription for their services.
Looking Up Your Personal Information
It is important to note that as you can quickly look for someone in different ways, others can also look for you online in the same ways. It is imperative to be aware of how much information about you is available from time to time.
The first thing you should try is to conduct a simple Google search of your name. See if there is any data that is private for you but is showing on the search results. You can also try using people-finder or data-collection sites or look up your state’s online public records and find those under your name.
Protecting Your Information
The internet is a vast space, and government regulations are not exhaustive yet to regulate everything people do—the best way to proactively protect your privacy and personal data. Try to manage how much information can be available about you on the search results. You can strengthen your privacy management setting on social media and regulate what you share and post online.
For privacy, consider opting out of data collector/people-finder sites, put in a complaint to the federal government, or personally email a site owner that has your information on display requesting it removed. If none of this works or you need instant results, professional help, like Erase.com’s online content removal services. They can help find all visible information about you on the web and let you take control. You can even achieve complete anonymity and privacy on the internet if you wish.
Take Control
Being searchable on Google can help, especially if you are looking for job opportunities or want to build your credibility, among other reasons. However, it is also necessary to give importance to privacy and safety. Knowing how you can be searched online can help you avoid being found as well. Take control and don’t let other people easily find you or get information about you without your consent.
Hemant is Digital Marketer and he has 6 + years of experience in SEO, Content marketing, Infographic etc.