Blog #6

Cyber-Stalking Myself

I'm not sure why, but I used to search my own name on Google and Twitter just to see what would pop up all the time when I was younger. As someone with an uncommon last name, I've always found pictures and information on myself pretty easily since there aren't a lot of people with my name. I haven't searched my own name on any platform in a while, so cyber-stalking myself for this blog assignment should be interesting. Social media could play a huge role in cyber-stalking as well, because about 77% of the U.S. population has an account of some kind. (Baker, 2018).

Most of my social media accounts are strictly private, except for my Twitter and Facebook accounts. I've had my Facebook account for so long that I'm not really sure what would come up at this point if I searched myself. If anything were to pop up, I'm assuming it would be an old picture I was tagged in or something that one of my friends or family members posted for my birthday. When it comes to Twitter, I have two public accounts: one for this class and my personal one. Personally, I don't really think you could find out anything significant about a person through their Twitter account unless they're creating their own content and engaging with people constantly, which is something I don't really do in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised at if some of my old tweets pop up during my search, but I'm not really expecting to find a lot about myself through social media. I don't think anything from social media will pop up, unless my name was mentioned in a tweet or something. In order to search myself, I logged out of all of my Google accounts and used my sister's Twitter account to search my own name. 

Basic Search

I started off my search by searching my full name (Madison Hool). Nothing popped up except for a really old recruiting profile that I didn't even know of. Also, some high schools popped up because of my first name, but that's about it. 

Since I knew I wasn't going to find anything with my full name, I searched myself using my "nickname," Maddie Hool. This is where a lot more information popped up. Way more softball stuff popped up. Everything from recruiting accounts that I had in high school to my CNU softball roster page. Even articles from my local newspaper that mentioned my name popped up. After this, I went to Google images just to see what would come up, but it was just softball pictures from high school and college. 

In-Depth Search

Since I didn't really find any of my social media accounts when I did a basic search, I decided to add my hometown to my next search to see if it would bring up something other than softball. I ended up getting more of a mix when I did this. More softball articles from high school popped up, but surprisingly enough my Facebook popped up even though I didn't search for it. This is when I realized that I should probably have more private features turned on when it comes to my Facebook account because you can literally see everything that I (rarely) post, what I get tagged in, and all of my pictures. Honestly you could probably find out more about me through my Facebook than any other social media platform since I've had it for so long. This really opened my eyes about privacy, especially because anyone can search my name and my Facebook account can pop up. 

I also searched my name and CNU together. Again, more softball articles/pictures popped up, but another platform popped up: my LinkedIn account. I hardly ever use LinkedIn, (sorry, I know I'm a terrible college student) but I thought it was interesting to see it come up in a search with my name. 

The last thing I did during my in-depth search was search myself on Twitter. To do this, my younger sister was nice enough to let me borrow her account for a few minutes so I could search my name. Hint: more and more softball tweets came up. After searching my name, I found some old tweets from my friends who mentioned my full name in a tweet. I'm not sure why, but just about all of my friends call me by my first AND last name, so it was pretty easy to find these tweets than if I would've just searched "Maddie." One interesting thing that I found was another girl with my exact same name! Even though I've known about this for a while because she followed me on Instagram about a year or so ago, I never knew that she had a Twitter account. I know that she's in high school, and she also plays softball, so this kind of feels like a glitch in the matrix or something. It really shows how easy it is to find someone and find out information about them through searching them on social media just through this example. 

Privacy

Since some of my social media accounts are public, this means that anyone can look up my name and find out some kind of information about me. Even though this is the case, this creeps me out...like a lot. My Instagram has always been private because I like to control who sees my profile, especially since Instagram is one of the platforms that I use the most and it probably shows more of a personal side. Before I cyber-stalked myself, I didn't really care that my Twitter and Facebook accounts were public. After seeing how easy it is to find myself through Google on these platforms, it changed my perspective on private accounts. After finding my own Facebook account, I definitely went and changed my privacy settings. I still feel a little indifferent towards Twitter because I don't really post my own content there. I might switch my Twitter account to private for a few days just to see how it goes. 

Cyber-stalking is something that can be done so easily, especially if you have basic information about a person. This blog assignment really opened my eyes about user privacy and how easy it is to find out information about someone just by searching their name online. 

References:

Baker, K. (2018). The ultimate guide to social media marketing campaigns. HubSpot. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-campaigns