Despite your best efforts, if you do a quick Google search of your name you will be surprised how much about you can be found out online. I expected that I would see information from my ePortfolio but was surprised when images from my personal Twitter showed up. What I didn’t consider is where my name would show up from events I had been involved in. I was active in High School and Junior Men’s curling in Manitoba and write ups concerning how we did in curling events showed up often.
When it came time to partner up and cyber sleuth a classmate, I didn’t have a partner. Instead, with permission, I attempted a deep dig on a friend of my sister. At her request, I am not posting screen shots or profile names of any of her social media sites. Like myself, I could find some information about her on Google like her LinkedIn profile, her Instagram profile name (although the account was set to private) and some local writeups about her volleyball and curling participation. However, some of the information on these sites She was a little harder to find on Google because there is an person with the same name who has a higher profile due to their sport career.
When I went onto the social media sites, I had the benefit of being connected to some of her friends, with the best access coming from my sister’s sites. I was able to see more pictures that she had been tagged in. Generally, overall, her social media presence was not that exposed. I’m guessing a lot of information is gathered about people through their connections with people you may know. I know some of my sister’s previous students found information on her because my parent’s didn’t have their social media on private. They do now though.
My last though on cyber sleuthing and a person’s social media presence is to consider how it might be used. When we were attending sport camps, there were often sessions on cleaning up your social media presence because university recruiters and coaches will often look at them to see what type of person you are off the court/ice/field. They don’t want people that look like they will cause them “trouble” by having a party lifestyle or participating in high risk activities. I think it is safe to assume that if university coaches are using it for these reasons, potential employers are too.