Have you Googled yourself lately?

I’m talking about going to Google and conducting a search for your first and last name. You know, ego-surf. Vanity search. What comes up? Most likely the information is…

Outdated
Embarrassing
Flat-out wrong
Not even you!

By the time you finish reading this book, you’ll know the risks of having personal information online, how to find it, clean it up, and easily monitor it in the future.

Digital Dirt

If you’re in college, you most likely have a MySpace page, FaceBook profile, Blog, or all of the above. If you aren’t a complete nerd, odds are that you probably have some incriminating photos, dubious comments, and questionable friends on these sites.

If you are a nerd, don’t stop reading just yet. No one is safe. Ever wonder if your World of Warcraft enemy, ex-girlfriend/ boyfriend, or that meat-head frat guy might be talking about you on these sites?

Have you pondered who might find this incriminating information about you? According to ExecuNet, a leading recruiting firm, 78% of executive recruiters routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates and 35% have eliminated candidates based on the information they found.

It’s not just employers who are digging around. Teachers, parents, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, and classmates can all access this information in various ways. According to USA Today, police are now being trained on how to use FaceBook so they can investigate complaints about students. Police have shut down parties and busted underage drinkers because of the information they have found.

Many of our parents, bosses and professors were college students at one time. They talked about the same things you do in the locker room or while hanging out after class. They took incriminating pictures of each other. They may have dabbled in recreational drugs or had a few beers before turning the legal drinking age. They might have written about the boundaries they tested, but it was probably in the back of a yearbook or on a bathroom stall.

The difference between the two generations is that our elders did not have the technology available to post this information for 1.6 Billion internet users to find.

Search Engine Watch reports there are 25 to 50 million proper name searches performed each day. Results from a random sample of 1,000 names from Naymz.com, showed an average of 13.4 searches are conducted daily on each name via Google, Yahoo, and MSN. According to comScore, these three engines compromise 85.3% of all searches conducted online as of July 2006. This indicates that each day somebody is searching to find the skinny on you. So, what are they finding? If you’re not careful, you could end up regretting not cleaning up your online identity.

Social-Networking Insanity

FaceBook MySpace Friendster Blogger Flickr YouTube

These are just a few of the hundreds of sites that allow anyone with internet access to instantly publish personal information about themselves and others. Those in the industry refer to these as “user-generated-content” sites. Personal information can also be found about people in online message boards, forums, personal Web sites, or news groups. In many cases, this information is harmful and malicious.

There are also a slew of “Girls Gone Wild” wannabe Web sites scouring the internet to find your worst stories and pictures and expose them to millions of people. Here are few addresses to keep you entertained for hours (assuming you aren’t surprised by finding yourself featured). Proceed with caution . . . . . .

www.drunkuniversity.com
www.boozetime.com
www.collegedrunkfest.com
www.ebaumsworld.com

The growth of these sites over the past few years is staggering:

They have become so big and controversial there is currently a bill circulating the U.S. House of Representatives which proposes to ban use of all social-networking sites (i.e., MySpace) in public schools and libraries.

So, you have a MySpace or FaceBook page with a few drunk photos and maybe a good story or two. You don’t need to worry about those, right? Nobody’s ever going to find them. Think again …..

Tom Drugan
Co-Founder of Naymz.com

This has been entry #1 in a series to come over the next few weeks.