Have you ever Googled yourself? It might sound silly or vain, but just like checking your credit report regularly, it’s a good idea to do it and see what comes up.
Business columnist Eve Nicholas wrote this week about guarding your personal information online as a job seeker. She advises not using your address or phone number in resumes submitted online to protect your privacy.
But what about other kinds of information? Personal interests listed on a blog or social networking site, political statements, embarrassing photos — all have a tendency to come up when a potential employer or anyone else goes searching for information about someone online.
We get requests from readers occasionally to remove or change an old article on HeraldNet out of concern for privacy or because someone doesn’t want old information or viewpoints to be available online.
Journalism professor Mindy McAdams recently wrote about this issue on her blog:
“We move forward in our lives, but our digital past refuses to be outpaced. People are unhappy at what Google or an online archives search reveals about who they used to be.”
Even if an article or Web posting is removed, it may still live on in search engines’ cached archives for months or even years.
McAdams says each of us can take charge of our digital identity by keeping our own updated home page, blog or resume. “That way,” she says, “the person you are stands a chance of superseding the person you were.”
Update: Here’s another post on the subject that brings up so-called “people search engines,” designed specifically to dig up dirt on people.
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