Today, if you’re active on the Internet, or even if you live in a cave, chances are good that you’ll have personal information online that is available for the taking. Have you ever Googled yourself? I’ll wait for you to stop giggling. If, you haven’t, give it a try. Head to Google, type in your first and last name, and prepare to be amazed. In most cases, a personal web site, and any social network profiles that you’ve created will appear first under the search results. These are no big deal since we have these sites under our personal control, allowing us to edit their content and manage privacy settings. The problems lie beyond these initial results. Let’s see what can be uncovered.
Last Tuesday in the United States was Election Day. There were no national races to vote on, but plenty of local elections were up for grabs. I headed for the polls in the afternoon, and fulfilled my patriotic duty. Later that night I learned about the website ConnVoters.com. What is that, do you ask? Well, it’s a website that lists every person that is registered to vote in the state of Connecticut. There’s an alphabetical listing, so I headed for G to see what information they’d shared of mine. Not much, only my full name, birthdate, address, phone number, sex, voter ID number, political party affiliation, polling place, and voting history including the day I registered to vote! It only takes about thirty seconds to run through a dozen potential scenarios that could happen because this information is on the Internet. It doesn’t stop there. Have you ever visited Intellius.com? How about Spokeo.com? With Intellius, for only $3.95, anyone can receive your full name, address, age, date of birth, any aliases you might use, phone number, your relatives, and address history. $9.95 will get you all those things, plus your social network profiles, and e-mail address(es). Finally, for $49.95 you can get a complete background check with everything listed earlier, plus property you own, any criminal activity, bankruptcies, liens, judgments, lawsuits, neighbors, as well as marriage and divorce records. Never have public records felt more public! Though they are public records, these services make it a little too easy for just anyone to find your entire history.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to get rid of these results. You can limit the personal information you submit to social media sites, or remove them altogether if you’d rather. Contacting Google is not the answer, because Google is only the messenger. You’ll see similar results from Bing, Yahoo, or any other Internet search provider. One thing to remember is to ONLY insert personal information into a secure website. How do you know a site is secure? Make sure that the web address begins with https and not http. Depending on the site and browser, a “safe” website will turn the address bar green and/or include a graphic of a padlock. The only proactive way to truly protect your identity is to look into a service such as Lifelock. Lifelock is a subscription service which offers several different packages. The standard package costs about $100 a year, and monitors websites that sell your identity, offers lost wallet protection, address change verification, helps to reduce pre-approved credit card offers, identity restoration support, and the guarantee that Lifelock will spend up to $1 million to help recovery if your identity is stolen while a member. Just to make this clear, I don’t work fo the company or receive a “kickback” if you sign up. I simply believe in their service and like to pass it along to others. For more information, visit Lifelock.com.
When I completed a search of my own name, I found results of my races, Finish Line Computer Services related links, my engagement announcement, a letter written to thank the community in New Jersey that found our lost dog, and ownership information, including contact information for our LLC that protects Finish Line. Literally my entire life is online, and that could prove devasting if it fell into the wrong hands. Identity theft is America’s fastest growing crime. I don’t tell you this to scare you, I just want you to know what’s out there. “To be forewarned is to be forearmed,” as they say!