Your Personal Information is on the Internet. Do You Keep Track Of It?
How much personal information do you have online? Have you ever thought about that question? Have you ever searched for your own name on Bing? How about the different variations of your name, have you googled them? Take this story that just happened to me as an example of how personal information and data can end up online without your knowledge or permission.
Today I received an email from, Google Alerts telling me that my name had popped up in a new web page. I get these emails just about every other day because I am on various social media outlets and I have my own computer repair blog so I didn’t think it was anything strange. However once I read the email, I had to check it out.
A day or 2 earlier I had written a letter of recommendation for a friend and thought nothing more about it. Then I get the Google Alerts email and I had to see what it was talking about. Apparently the friend needed to convert the Microsoft Word file to an Adobe Acrobat file and used the website http://www.scribd.com to do so. No big deal, right? Well, the website made the letter public and Google had searched it and found my name. This is why I was alerted. So I called my friend to ask her about it and apparently her resume as well as 2 more letters of recommendation were also posted online as well. Thanks to Google Alerts, we were spared the embarrassment of having somebody else find it.
How much of your personal information is online? Have you ever Googled your own name? I highly recommend it, you could be shocked at what you find. And if I were you, I would set up alerts for the different variations of your name. That way, any time something new is added, you’ll know about it.
Creating your own alerts is simple. No account or login is needed.
1. Go to Google Alerts.
2. Input the name or phrase for which you are interested in receiving alerts.
3. Choose comprehensive.
4. Enter your email address.
5. Click on “Create Alert”.
6. Google will automatically send an email to the address that you enter. This email contains a link that says “Verify this Google Alert request” and you need to click on it.
7. You’re done.
Keeping up to date with your information online is a great way to reduce embarrassment and credit fraud.