Digital Tattoos
For this blog, I was really excited to know what Digital Tattoos was all about. I love tattoos and I have some of my own which leads me to think we would be talking about our tattoos. Little did I know that we would be talking about the tattoos we create for each other on the web. Amazing and shocking to know that 81% of two-year-olds have a digital footprint without their knowledge and consent. This shocked me because I never really thought about this deeply enough. I have been sharing pictures of my little cousin ever since she was born. She is now 10 and recently open up an Instagram account. The moment she posted her first picture, which was a picture with her family, I imminently gave her a lecture about social media. But what difference does it make? I was already sharing pictures of her on the web way before she even open up an Instagram account.
With that being said, once I started doing my own research about myself, one of the things that came up on Google when I typed "Diana Madrigal" was my Pinterest profile picture of my cousin and me. Another piece of information that came up on google with my full name was my soccer record when I use to play in high school. It showed the time frame I played for that high school, the position I played, the goals I did, and my average rating.
Image Source:
Pinterest
Nothing much was coming up when I searched my First and last name on Google, so I tried googling my username for my old social media accounts "diaanaah." The weirdest and creepiest thing I found was a picture of my sister for a Twitter account that is not mine. The funny story is that I was doing this assignment with my sister being present. She saw what came up and she was freaking out because someone else was using one of her pictures. This makes me wonder how many people steal other people's pictures and use them as their own.
I then went ahead and tried other web pages to search for more information about myself. I used
locatepeople and found out a person who had the same name as me with the same home address but with the wrong age. I am currently 27 years old not 21. It also had one of my uncle's names listed as my relatives.
Image Source: by Author
I also tried searching my name on the Illinois Record for teachers but I was not able to find anything. Is it because it is only my 3rd year? I went and did another search by using
fastpeoplesearch with my full name and my new home address showed up. The weird part was that it showed my tenant's name and I was classified as the past resident. It then showed up information about my tenants' old address and his age.
Image Source: by Author
I also used the basic information that I could get from
checkpeople. By basic I mean the free version because in order to get the full report I had to pay. The little information I got from this website is that it had my sister and dad mention as my relatives. However, it had my age wrong again. Another of the basic information I found was using
peoplefinders. I was able to find my cousin, my sister and dad as a relative. My age was correct. My city was correct. However, my name had a middle name E. I tried doing search by my phone number but nothing will come out
After doing research about myself, I found it very difficult to find anything accurate about myself. Some webpages had my old address, my new address, the wrong phone number, the right relatives but wrong name and most of them did not have my age correctly. I tried searching my usernames from old social media but I couldn't find anything. It was really hard. Which I think this is good? The less you know about me the better? 😊 I try to be very private with my life now so I think the fact that I struggle searching about myself can be a positive thing. I was pretty happy to know I am not that easy to find!
Hi Diana! I could relate to a ton of what you were saying in the beginning of your blog post. When I watched the series of videos that Nicole made for our class, I also thought it was so crazy to hear all the statistics about young children and the already very large digital footprint most of them have. You and I are around the same age (I am 29) so I am sure we are both thinking about how it's just so different than when we were young! I teach 4th grade, so my students are the same age as the cousin you mentioned, and I know many of my students have some sort of social media account already and honestly it makes me so nervous for them! Yet again, things are just different than they used to be. I think it goes to show the importance of "they are going to do it anyway, so we need to teach them how to do it safely" type of mindset!
ReplyDeleteHi Diana! I found similar results when looking myself up. It was hard to find myself, which in the long run I think is good. It is kind of creepy the amount of information you can find about other people online. I would much rather be harder to find online and have my life be more private than have everything I do be public knowledge like a celebrity. However, when doing my research, I think what really made it hard to find myself is that my name is super common. Therefore, I found out lots of information about other Emma Lewis's in the world but they were not me. Thanks for sharing your post!
ReplyDeleteHi Diana! I, also, can relate so much to how creepy it is to be able to look yourself up and find your whole social media history online even after deleting it or not using it in ages. I do not have a common name so it was easier to find myself when I Googled it. I think because of the run in I have add in the news and media, it leaves me in awe on how much my name is online but in the end it was for a good cause. I think our students will mostly end up using social media at some point so teaching them that the things that they post can be forever is the way to go so they make good choices.
ReplyDeleteHi Diana, I love your post and all of the reflections you had as you conducted your search! I can certainly understand why your sister would be alarmed at learning someone else is using her photo. Taking and using the photos of other people is probably more common than we realize. Regarding the statistic about young children and their social media presence, I found myself having an unusual conversation with my daughters as they began babysitting. They loved taking pictures of the kids, but before they posted anything to social media, I made them ask the children's parents for permission. Similar to you, I found quite a bit of wrong information about me when I conducted my data mine; I'm undecided on how I feel about it. Sometimes the wrong information can be more harmful than the correct info. Thank you for sharing; I loved reading your post.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear you were happy with your results! I also appreciated the reflection on how you were adding to your cousin's digital tattoo without even realizing it.
ReplyDelete