Digital Tattoo

Data Mine

I don't have a tattoo. I was born with a birth mark across my lower back that looks like a tattoo I am trying to cover up, so I often joke that "God gave me a tattoo." I also almost made a grave mistake and got a tattoo of a triangle inside of an octagon to represent the friendship I had with a handful of my college girlfriends... our friendship didn't last the next year, so thankfully that didn't happen! But I don't have a tattoo.

I do, however, have a digital tattoo. 

So much of my life is available on the internet. By just knowing a few details about me, such as my maiden name or the state that I live in, you can easily figure out my entire life.

I first did a quick Google search of my name. Each time I did it came up with about 26,000 results in less than 0.3 seconds. The majority of the results came back as items I had pinned on Pinterest, but there was also my baby registry from when my daughter was born in 2015, my grandfather's obituary, links to my parents information, donations I made to St. Balderick's, reviews I made, a webquest I created, and my Symbaloo resources. My maiden name didn't come back with as many matching results... apparently there are a handful of people who spell their name like I do and have the same last name!

So I checked out a few other websites, one being Nuwber. I started with my maiden name and it came up not only with my middle initial, but also the phone number to my parent's house, the address, when the house was built, what kind of house it was, what addresses I have had previously, the names of my parent's neighbors (I had no idea that who they were!), and so much more. When I searched my married name in the engine, it had me living in Florida. 😆 I wish! However, our family does have a place in the exact city it states.

Each site gave similar information. Radaris had every form of my name spelled out, along with three of my uncles, my grandfather that passed away 30 years ago, my grandmother who passed away 17 years ago, my brother-in-law, my sister, my parents, and my grandfather who passed away a year and a half ago. Intelius had my high school, college, and current employer. It also listed someone not related to me but an old friend of my brother-in-law's. 😂 PeopleFinders had two accounts for me: one with the wrong age but had all of my in-laws listed, another with the correct age that had all of my family members listed. PeekYou had the ability to find 6 former e-mail addresses I have had (and about 4 of them I had forgotten!). I searched my personal e-mail address on Spokeo and it gave my age, some of my address, and for just a couple dollars a month would be able to give 12+ Social Networks and 1+ photos.

I felt a handful of emotions as I scoured the internet for myself.

Image Source: Giphy

I felt nostalgic.  

The Webquest I created for my students was before our district was utilizing the "intranet" and before we had our own site pages. It was even before our district adopted the Common Core Standards! It was probably close to a decade ago that I made that webquest (oh! the changes I would make to it now!) and didn't have all of the aspects that were originally created, but there it still lives on the internet.


I felt violated. Seeing so much of my information, and the information of my family members, is violating. So many secret password questions can be found by taking a couple of minutes and compiling the information from various sources. It is no wonder that there are so many stolen identities - it seems easy to do these days.

Image Source: Giphy

I felt confused. When I searched my cell phone number that I have had since 2008 on Nuwber, it said that the number belonged to a man living in Anchorage, Alaska. When it had everything so right, how did it get that one so wrong?! I was also confused as to what pictures and connections that some of the databases (like Spokeo) were referencing. 😊 It kind of made me want to pay for my information!

I think that students need to know how much of their lives are being broadcasted over the internet and how easily it can be found. With the average digital preference starting at 6 months old, I think that parents need to be aware of this. They may find the picture of their chubby-half-naked baby funny and cute, but is it something that they want their child's future employer to potentially see? I also think that the moment a child is given access to their own accounts - whether it is a social media account like Facebook or Instagram, an e-mail account, or any outlet where they are putting their personal information into an online system - we need to educate them. This is a society-wide education, not just placed on the shoulders of one individual. Students need to be educated by parents and teachers about the appropriateness of what they are saying, posting, or showing others. I continuously hear of children being children and making mistakes, saying things that they really don't mean or completely understand the ramifications of, and are facing suspensions and other disciplinary measures. 

I loved being in my late tweens and early twenties. I thought that I was invincible and that I had the world at my fingertips. I believed that I could make all the mistakes I wanted to and they'd be forgotten. I was wrong. The internet holds all of your secrets and makes them a tattoo onto you. And while I truly have nothing to hide and thus do not care what people find out about me, there are people who do.

Tattoos are difficult to cover up, and I'm not sure if there are many that have been able to successfully do so. They always leave a mark of some sort.