Digital Mining

 Can You "Dig" It?

Wow!  If I get the chance or on a winters cold day to do more digging, mining, and searching I just might.   My first thoughts prior to beginning the searches, was that I am not going to find much information let alone surprising information, which was true, however, I did find some things interesting and wondering if my marriage certificate is recorded properly.  For most of the sites, I was able to pull up my current address, past addresses, people associated with me, only once, did I find mention of my COTA license which I thought would pop up everywhere since it's very public, being a part of IDPFR (Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation).  I am just curious, maybe a little concerned with why my husband's name as listed last or not at all, yet his brother, sister, and my mother-in-law were listed as associated with me, just odd.  

                                                                 Cited Image :  Giphy.com

I got confused with many of the sites, for example, NameChk, wanted me to redirect to a Google account while I was using Duck, Duck, Go browser, and it was not providing a search bar to type a search, it was not clear, so I left that site. BlockShopper had categorized news stories and market data for homeowners, buyers, and sellers.  When searching under "Homeowners", I thought this would be for anyone, but it is for practicing Realtors, which I am according to a couple of these sites in New York.  Spezify, searched under the browser, Google Chrome, was another site that listed many other associations with it, like LinkedIn, Facebook, AVC, Trendland, X, WA.gov, WordPress.com, Free Technology for Teachers and Crunchbase.  Didn't find anything here except 9 or 10 different Nicole Salamone's that are not me.  InstantCheckmate, also under Chrome, took a long time to "find my public information", indicating that I will be shocked to find out about my criminal history and my social media history.  I left this site due to the length of time to pull up information that it was only going to have me pay for to get the information, so I decided to move on.  

Some sites made me just wonder who is documenting the demographics and how are these sites retrieving the information, because some of it was completely wrong yet, had my correct name, age, and town I currently live in.  While using browser, Duck, Duck, Go, Radaris found me as the only "Nicole Salamone" in Elgin, Illinois.  Of the sites viewed, Radaris was the only site to list completely random people associated with me that I have never heard of before, yet my demographics, minus my phone number, was correct.

Cited Image: Author's screenshot by Radaris 

Still within Duck, Duck, Go, FamilyTreeNow, which displayed as being sponsored by BeenVerified.com, surprised me by not listing my husband at all.  It did list aside from my parents, my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and included our 4th nephew, but not the first 3 nephews at all.

                                            Cited Image:  Author's screenshot FamilyTreeNow 

Within Chrome browser, My Life is set up to check individual's reputations.  It stated that 67% of people lie about who they are online and 27% of people have been victim's of fraud or worse.  Individuals can find out what is public in your Reputation Profile and check your score based on public criminal and court records, personal reviews and more.  From what I viewed, I could not find a legend for the reputation score, but My Life scored my reputation between 3.22 - 4.63.  I just could not decipher what it means or if it's better to be on the lower end or the higher end?  Here is a screenshot of the reputation score at the bottom left :

Cited Image: Author's Screenshot within MyLife

MyLife also listed me as single, registered me as an unaffiliated / nonaffiliated voter, yet family members listed included my husband but excluded my sister-in-law.  The information must be auto-generated digitally, and that is why information is skewed from site to site.

Upon searching my name in Google, I am a Digital Designer, Artist, and Writer in Brooklyn, N.Y., 

                                  No, I am an Assistant Field Hockey Coach at Trinity College

                      Nope, I am a Consulting Manager in New York,

                  

 No, I am a Designer, Artist, and Educator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico within an independent practice,

          In my spare time, I am a #4 Defense Soccer Player,

              I am also a Commissioner of Jurors in the New York courts,

                    Finally, I am a Real Estate Agent and Realtor (?Difference) in Sewell, New Jersey.

Back under Duck, Duck, Go, the site that was most revealing of public information  was FastPeopleSearch.  It found me right away, it stated my married name, but said that I go by my maiden name as my last name.  Current and past addresses were correct, including all my residences that we have had in Illinois except one.  The fascinating thing to me with FastPeopleSearch, is that it allowed you to dig further and further into addresses seeing who lives in previous residences that you've lived in.  Individuals can then click further into the members of households of those residences.  You are able to view names and phone numbers within the address searches.  This site also provided public property records of all residences lived in.  This site as well as all sites, listed our landline phone # as our primary phone, which we haven't had for quite a number of years now, but I was ok with that.  I was able to come across, a last known address of a family member that we have lost contact with for personal reasons, but may be needed information for future or at least a good lead as a last known address.  Here is a screenshot of FastPeopleSearch:

Cited Image: Author's screenshot within FastPeopleSearch

To address the question, Is this a skill to be taught to students?  If so, how young do we start?  I do think students should be taught this skill.  I don't know what impact it would be on a younger learner since they may not see that much history.  Although, what my middle schoolers may search and find is much different from what I searched.  Aside from their school placing pictures on their Facebook page, we have been very careful about our kids being published on social media.  How young?  I have two thoughts, there may be some 8th graders that could handle this education and I wonder if it would make them think twice, when they start high school, to not do stupid because they'll realize that every choice they make could be recorded and documented somewhere for their lifetime.  On the other hand, is it wise to wait until Senior year of high school, as they turn 18 or enter college and are beginning the adulting stage?  I love the idea of having School Librarian's teach this skill.  School Librarian's could first teach the  parents so they can be educated on the same skill as their child, pre-teen, teen, or older teen.  The parents can then choose to opt out or not for their younger child or have discussions with their teen and decide if they are ready to receive that education.  The younger learner is exposed to so much already, why not teach them all they should be aware of, get them thinking of the impact of digital mining, yet, they do need the maturity to understand that impact.