There are very few people with my last name, most of them with less of a presence on the Web than I, and to the best of my knowledge, there’s no one at all in the US with the same firstname-lastname combination as me (there might be one or two in Germany), so if you Google me, you’ll find me.
None of what you’ll find about me is particularly embarrassing, and I can think of a number of legitimate reasons for someone to Google me. So no, I wouldn’t be bothered by it.
No one has ever told me that. It’s “stalker-creepy”, so I doubt many men would admit something like that to a woman because “stalker-creepy” is how many women, including myself, would interpret it.
On the flip side, my wife will happily admit that she Googled the shit out of me AND had a friend run a background check on me before she considered meeting me (we knew each other online via a different forum). She had come out of a relationship where some dude told her a bunch of lies, stole from her, etc so I wasn’t offended and – benefits of clean living – had nothing to find anyway.
One of my Google hits is some report place breathlessly saying “Jophiel Has Arrest or Court Records!”. Whoever pays for that is going to be disappointed to find out my “court records” are me getting custody of my kid some 20 years ago.
If the person that tells me is an old high school classmate that was thinking of me and decided to see if they could find me, I would be flattered. If the person is a coworker who wants to learn my personal stuff I would not be happy.
My name is uncommon enough that you would get some some people who are not me. There is a high school coach, a politician, and even someone who was part of a crew on a television show.
I put in my name and a city I lived in the first thing that came up was the real me. A newspaper had an article featuring me (it was an honoring thing). It includes a youtube video where I was interviewed.
Ooooh, betcha kayaker eventually gets the name of whoever gave a *total fucking stranger with a plausible tale/I] his number.
Betcha he reams 'em out for it, too.
Show of hands: who went and quickly googled themselves after seeing this thread?
My results were underwhelming, except that apparently I have a public Pinterest board - so a google image search under my name coughs up results that are super weird, unless you know my hobbies, in which case a tiny birdcage made of seed beads next to a coffee table-slash-terrarium make perfect sense. “Oh, yeah, those look like something purple likes!”
My marriage records are public, of course, which means the name of my late Other Shoe turns up in all the aggregate directory sites, nestled there with my name.
Are death records public? I thought they were, but the ^^ sites never mention that part. Maybe you gotta pay extra for that?
Someone with the same first name, initial, last name and suffix as me died in 2002. I’m a zombie!
I just googled my full name and didn’t see a single page about me in the first 5 pages. If you drop the middle name you’ll have more progress since I normally make the first or second page (actually just checked and about half the first page is about me). Between advertising my consulting services and my TV show I’m not that hard to find.
Since I put so much work into my web presence it would be pretty normal for work people to find me through Google and that wouldn’t bother me at all. I’ve had people looking to get in contact with my dad reach out to me as well. I had a background check run on me a couple of years ago to make sure I didn’t have too much crazy stuff on line before the TV show and I was impressed how much they were able to turn up though they didn’t find the Dope so I’m still relatively safe here.
Dupe post
[Officially bumping zombie Andy L]
BUMP
Nope, no “reaming out”. I’ll just unfriend them on Facebook and block their phone number.
I’d feel stalked. I once had a stalker call me at work, when I had been through a couple of job and name and address changes since he last knew me. It was terrifying.
I have an unusual surname. If you Google me (just first name/surname), I’m just about every hit on the first page of Google. I have a fairly prominent position in my local industry, so just assume that people will Google me if they’re trying to find me and want to know more about me. I don’t feel creeped out at all - all the Google hits are work related. Isn’t it just what people do nowadays?
And I KNOW my Dad looks me up on pretty much a daily basis.
As a result of all this, I’m fairly circumspect about what I put out there. I don’t bother much with Facebook anymore, and I stand by anything I rant about on Twitter.
No one has ever told me that, but I would find it somewhat strange.
There are only 2 reasons I’d expect someone to look me up: They were going to go out on a date with me, or potentially hire me.
I am not single, and not in the job market. So if somebody told me that I’d definitely be asking them why.
I wasn’t actually on the Titanic, it was that other guy.
I did have one person say they looked me up on Facebook. Since the person was female, I immediately assumed she thought I was hot. I might be wrong, but my ego prefers to pretend I was right.
I’d be flattered, unless there was already something alarming about the person who was doing it.
But, then, I’m an old male, not the sort to interest creepers or stalkers. That would change everything. I’d be cautious about looking up women for this reason, too.
My full name and home address have been available on the web almost since its inception, because they appear on my patents. Gee, employer, thanks for putting that out there. Who saw that coming?
Googling people these days is just the human version of dogs sniffing each others’ butts.
Luckily, the Web didn’t exist when I was doing stupid things in my teens and 20s, so what you’ll find about me is pretty innocuous. Work as a writer and you end up with a lot of web presence. If you just use my first & last name, you’ll find out all about a world champion darts player (actually, about half the hits on the first page get you to me), but if you include my middle initial it’s all me.
I wouldn’t care, unless there was a stalker-ish vibe from the person who told me.
Anyway, my name IRL is so common that even if you add key words related to my life (name of my college, places I’ve lived) you still get a lot of results from obviously different people. Basically, in order to successfully Google me, you have to know so much about me already that you probably don’t need to Google.
An aside: The only remotely interesting thing I’ve every found about myself through a vanity Google is that I’m cited as the source in a footnote in some ridiculous right-wing conspiracy theory paper about James Riady and Bill Clinton. Way back in the 1990s I had sent someone a memo about the seating arrangements at a speech Mickey Kantor was giving, and someone from the Lippo Group was seated next to some visiting White House dignitary at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Jakarta. As a smoking gun, it leaves much to be desired. However, I will give credit to whoever wrote the “proof” of Clinton Administration evil doing credit for painstakingly citing.
You’re back! Yay!
Meh. It wouldn’t bother me unless they’d already thrown up other red flags.
I’d more interested in their response to the absolute lack of results. I connected the VPN to Denver and popped a private window. Google brought up nothing on me and I wasn’t in the first few hundred FB results.
Adding my city was enough to find my LinkedIn and for the info aggregators to pin me down.
Thanks, Piper! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?