Data Dive

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My generation was the first to really grow up with the internet. I remember being in elementary school and having to wait up to an hour for the dial-up internet to load our free version of AOL just so I could email my friend back and check to see if Barry Bonds was any closer to breaking the single-season home run record. I was all over AIM and Myspace growing up, fighting my brother for computer time every night. We had fun going into chat rooms with our friends, and one time I remember my brother got our AOL accounts temporarily banned because he swore at someone in a chat room. We denied it, but my parents had to call AOL to reactivate our accounts and they read us a transcript of what he said. This was the first time I realized that our actions on the internet could cause consequences in real-life. I learned this lesson in a low-risk situation as a 6th grader, but with the amount of information people share on social media, this mistake could have a much greater impact on their future.  I am constantly hearing stories in the news about pro athletes, like quarterback Josh Allen and pitcher Josh Hader, costing themselves millions of dollars for tweets they sent out as high schoolers. For class this week we were asked to do a personal "data dive" to investigate our digital tattoo, and I was actually looking forward to taking some time to scrub the internet to see what information about me is available to the public.

What I found

After scouring several sites suggested by Mrs. Zumpano, I realized that I have very little online presence if you were to just search my name. I believe this is due to a combination of me being paranoid about social media when I started college and heard horror stories of people getting in trouble because of it, as well as having a very common name. When you search for me on Google by my legal name or my alias Jake Thompson, you will see stories about Jake Thompson the MLB pitcher and hundreds of other "Jacob Thompson"s who are more important than me. What I did not like was seeing how all of my personal information so readily available. Here is a break down of some of the highlight of what I found on the sites I searched: 

• Nuwber: They knew I was a male between 25 and 30 years old. They listed my immediate family, grandmother, and even my old neighbors
• Fast People Search: Current and former addresses with maps, phone number, with lot more family. This site also included my sister in-law's family, and lists my girlfriend as a “possible associate”. This is probably because we purchased a condo together. This site had my exact age as well.
• Spokeo: Only name and family
• Google: Hard to find info on me since my name is so common. There was a sad story of a sick child named Jacob Thompson which has a lot of news stories, as well as a MLB player and an author named Jake Thompson.  You have to search by my name and school to find any professional info, or name and home town to see I played basketball in high school. 
•  Picture from my school web page that showed up: 
  (Image Source)
• Facebook:  Can’t find through search and I rarely post on there.
• Twitter: If you know my username (@MrThompsonCJHS) you can tell I’m interested in ed tech and math education based on my tweets, but it's all professional.
• Instant Checkmate: a few correct and incorrect relatives. Name, age, and city were accurate.
• Intelius: Name, cities I’ve lived in, immediate family & my girlfriend
• Chicago Blockshopper: This site had my address and date I purchased my home, price of purchase, as well as my property taxes. It also included a map of where I lived.
• Searched all over Google images and Youtube and there are too many Jake Thompson’s out there

Overall, I am a little relieved I didn't find anything bad out there that would hurt my reputation, but I was a little disappointed in my professional presence. After hearing about the benefits of having professional work pages show up in a Google search, I will continue to work on putting myself out there through my professional Twitter account and my website.