Looking Myself Up on Google

            My first concern upon finding my name on zabasearch.com was that for a small fee, one could get a great deal of information about my life. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s not that difficult to find this information even if it wasn’t available on the Internet. It’s all free, and open access, information. The only difference is that on zabasearch.com it is all comprised in one place, whereas one would usually have to find the information in many different places (White Pages, district court dockets, birth announcements, etc.). Very little comes up about me when I search my name in Google; my Google+ page, an article about making Dean’s List, and my Linked In profile are just about the only links. Since I think I may be the only Faith-Anne Phoebe in the US (at least the only one that has any sort of online presence) it is sort of unnerving; I can’t take comfort in the fact that there are hundreds of other Faith-Anne Phoebes that these links could be about, and someone searching the name could easily find quite a bit of information about me.

        

         My ‘aha’ moment of the week came while reading the textbook. One simple phrase made so much sense as soon as I read it: “There was no golden age of privacy” (Brin 70). I think that sums up so much of what we have been studying already, and will continue to study for the rest of the course. So often, I hear people reference 'Big Brother' when talking about the state of our current society and privacy issues. But the textbook references the bizarre and intrusive questions asked by the census bureau not all that long ago; how is that any better than being able to find my old addresses for the price of $14.95 on a random website?

           

         I feel the same way about my privacy that I have already seen referenced a few times in the textbook: I’m boring. There is nothing interesting or strange about me, so what do I care if a database in a nameless warehouse keeps track of my purchases at the local grocery store? At worst, it will track that I’ve bought a product that might be deemed embarrassing—and I’m pretty much past the point in my life that a grocery store purchase contains something of embarrassment. At best, I get coupons tailored to my shopping habits. There was a point in my life where I feared for my privacy. But the more I think about it, the less I worry. Brin made many predictions that have actually come to fruition (and I’m only on chapter 5, so I can only assume there will be more to come), and they aren’t nearly as bad as sensationalism had made them out to be. I would actually say the more I learn in the course, the less nervous I am about privacy; I suppose it’s because the more I learn, the more I understand how unfounded that fear can be. We need to be held accountable for our lives and choices; we live in a connected society that becomes more connected each day. I think it can be good that information is more readily accessible, to a point; if everyday citizens see that a more open society isn’t a bad thing, then we can hold the ‘secretive’ areas of our society (banks, government) more accountable for their actions and decisions.