Digital Tattoos are Cool, Actually

This week, as I've continued researching privacy and safety online, I encountered a new term: digital tattoo. As opposed to a digital footprint (the term I'm more familiar with), I think the term digital tattoo better communicates the permanency of posting and sharing our lives on social media. A footprint can be pretty easily washed away or disfigured, but a tattoo isn't so easily reversible, and neither is it as easy to fully delete our personal details from the internet. 

I decided to investigate my own digital tattoo by performing a limited data mine on myself. I used several public record aggregator sites (also known as "background check" or "people finder" sites) to see what information they had on me. I also used the most popular search engines and browsers to search for my name and various usernames I've used in my life. 

A Public Record of "Private" Information

I input my name and applied age/location filters on seven of the most popular public records sites to see what came up. They all had a basic level of detail on me, including my name, address history, phone number, gender, age, and family members. All of this information is legally available in the public record, but it was still a bit unnerving to see how easy it was to find all that data on me aggregated together.

I noticed that all of these sites (and a couple more that didn't work out) use language that implies possible wrong-doing on the part of the one being searched for, validating any suspicion of unsavoriness by the user. They do this by consistently mentioning DUIs, criminal records, escort sites, secret social media or dating accounts, and other "shocking" information. One brief pop-up stated, "Kate won't know you ran a background check on them!". I've included a few representative examples of typical language they use below.

[Author screenshot from Radaris]

[Author screenshot from Spezify]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Author screenshot from Nuwber]

At this point, red flags were being raised in my mind as these sites desperately try to convince me that if I just click one more button, answer one more question, wait three more minutes, provide an email address, and pay a small fee, I can know everything I ever wanted.

If such a website successfully baits you into clicking the "full report" button, they'll initiate a process where they are supposedly actively searching databases for more information, but if you navigate away, the process pauses until you pull up that page again. Timers and loading bars imply progress, but aren't connected to anything. Multiple additional "confirm" or "agree" stages tell the user they are integral to pushing the process along.

All of these techniques and the time and effort put in by the user encourages sunk cost rationalization, leading the user to agree to pay… 

What? Only $0.95 for the full report? Yeah, right. 

A quick search revealed many consistent complaints from people about surprise charges on the Better Business Bureau page for a certain website.

So, if you decide to use one of these sites, please don't pay them anything. Whatever information you may get isn't worth it.

Let's move on. An omission that I noticed in all of these sites was that they didn't connect any of my usernames. I've been on the internet for a long time and created my first enduring username in 2006, so this was pretty surprising. I decided to continue my self-data mining with another method, this time focusing on my given name and my usernames and seeing what comes up.

Finding Myself (Online)

I continued the old fashioned way -- with browser-based search engines. I used DuckDuckGo on Firefox, Google on Chrome, and Bing on Edge. I entered incognito mode to avoid biased results from being signed in, and used a couple different search techniques to try to find my digital profiles. 

To be thorough, I started by adding filetype:doc (then pdf, then jpg) to a search of my full name to tell the engine to look specifically for mentions of my name within these specified filetypes. Nothing came up, which wasn't surprising. None of my personal photos came up either, thanks to there being a more well-known figure who shares my name that took up the image results. I searched with "intext:" before my name to tell the search engine to look for my name in the text of a webpage, which also didn't return any results related to me. 

Finally, I searched for my most used usernames. All the search engines returned pretty much the same info related to me within the first several pages, though there were some exceptions, such as that only Bing found my Reddit account, and only Google found my Wikimedia account. 

I searched for the name of this blog, Kate in Context. If it was in quotes then this blog came up as the first result on all search engines, but without them, a book about Kate Chopin would take precedence. On Bing my blog was still the third result, but it was pushed to the second page of DuckDuckGo. I gave up on Google when it failed to return my blog within eleven pages, placing Sarah Silverman's Wikipedia page as a more relevant result than the literal name of my blog. 

It's only a little annoying. [Author screenshot of Google search results]

Split (Digital) Personality 

There are advantages to having a solid digital identity. Having a strong, searchable digital presence means that people can find your work, read your blog, browse your portfolio, and be able to credit you appropriately. Using the same username for all of your accounts and attaching your real name exposes you to bad actors, but it also exposes you to opportunities that may not have materialized if you had no professional identity online. 

"Bad things could happen, they warn. But then, bad things always could." -Jeff Jarvis 

As I reenter the social media space, I have the opportunity to intentionally form my professional digital identity. My previous profiles will still exist, but by using a new username for my professional profiles I can create some separation between my different digital identities. I can leave my middle school DeviantArt account in the past, for example, because while I know that while a determined sleuth would be able to connect the dots, a potential employer probably won't put in that same level of effort. 

Going forward

As I move into the post-graduation world of paid information professionals, I want to establish a digital presence and a professional network to market myself, connect with other professionals, and find/share resources. In addition to these personal benefits, potential employers use social media to form a more multi-dimensional picture of you as a prospective hire, and not having a social media account can be seen as a red flag.

It can be alarming to think about all the information that is publicly available about us online. If you, like me, have been on the internet for most of your life, then you also likely have a pretty extensive digital tattoo. However, that doesn't have to be your only digital tattoo.

Just as I have multiple physical tattoos, I use my various usernames to have multiple digital tattoos. Just like my physical tattoos, some of my usernames are very visible and unique and clearly connected to me, while others are more anonymous. I can't start over, I can't erase my past, but I can move forward online with intention, and so can you.