Louis J Sheehan 654329 Vicksburg

December 17, 2007, 1:42 pm
What the Internet Knows About You
Posted by Ben Worthen

We often wonder why there isn’t more outrage when companies announce they’ve lost data about customers or employees. Here’s part of the answer: Most Americans don’t care what information about them is publicly available. HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
That doesn’t mean Americans aren’t curious what the Internet knows about them. A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a non-profit organization which tracks the Internet’s impact on society, found that 47% of Americans say they’ve searched the Internet for information about themselves on the search engine Google, up from 22% in 2002. (While less than half of Americans say they’ve Googled themselves, 72% have looked for information about other people.) Sixty percent of these searches returned information.
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Thirty-five percent of people who use the Internet say that their home addresses and the name of the company they work for are available for anyone to see online. Other information available online includes email addresses (32%), phone numbers (30%), things they’ve written (24%) and photographs (23%). Eighty-seven percent of searchers say the information they find is accurate. Twenty-one percent are surprised about how much information is available. HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US


So people are waking up to the fact that this information is out there and that it’s next to impossible to control. But most aren’t concerned: Pew says that 60% of the people who took its survey aren’t worried about the information about them available online. Of those who do care, only 54% have taken steps to limit the information about themselves that’s available.

Why aren’t people concerned? Our guess is that it’s evolutionary. Five years ago, as the study shows, people didn’t even think to look what information might be available about themselves online – heck, only half the population does now. Outrage will rise in proportion to the number of people who find things they don’t like.
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