Spring Semester ETEC527, Vanity Search

Completing this Blog is part of a continuing class assignment for ETEC527, Web 2.0 Technologies for Instruction.

Part of our assignment this week was to set up a Blog account, Google account, and a Twitter account.  Luckily I had not deleted this Blog which I started in a previous semester as an assignment. I also had a Google account (truth be told I have several of those since I use them for personal, work, and grad school). I begrudgingly set up a Twitter account so that I can hopefully make a decent grade in this course. I have never had an interest in Twitter, and I will be deactivating the account when this class ends.

In addition to the tasks listed above, we were to do a Vanity search using Google. I never realized that there were so many people in the United States that I share a name with.  I also never realized how much factual information about me is out there on the internet.  I was relieved to see that there was only one picture of me that appeared when I did the search. The other pictures were of the people who share the same name with me. The one picture I found was published by the National Academy Foundation (NAF) when I had participated in a technology program. The most disturbing part of this vanity search was seeing how many times my name popped up. I found my name listed on 6 different web sites, and a couple of those sites had me listed more than one time. One of the sites has me listed as living in the wrong town, but it has my correct cell phone number posted for the whole world to see.

I am thankful that I did not find a bunch of pictures floating around on the web. But on the other hand I am appalled at the amount of factual information that is there for anyone to make use of. I work hard to protect myself. I never post pictures of myself. I refuse to use cash apps or fill out information from my cell phone. I have heard commercials about helping people remove their information from web sites.  After doing this assignment, perhaps I should research how to best do that.