Trapped in the Net

There's an informative article in the July 9 JAMA about web searching for information about physicians (JAMA: 300:2; 213). It suggests that the internet is both the friend and foe of the physicians. However, the same applies to anyone of any profession, or even a retiree such as myself who has a "presence" on the web. I'm going to substitute the word "you" for "physician," and "client" for "patient," so you'll see what I mean. All this is paraphrased from the article.

States [or agencies or employers] now routinely publish information about your education, training, certification and publications.

These sites may also include information about disciplinary actions.

Information about lawsuits and [other employment problems] are often available with a dozen keystrokes.

Increasingly, data about your performance are being made available in the public domain.

Some information not available to the general public is shared by professional groups and insurance companies, and then indirectly to clients.

Personal information is readily available on the web.

Mortgage deed registries are now available online.

With just a last name, in some cities, a client can obtain your home address, home price, and mortgage information.

It is also possible to infer if you are married or in a domestic partnership by determining who is the co-owner.

Several Web sites will complete discreet "digital background checks" for a small fee.

Date of birth, criminal records, marriage records, bankruptcy records, small claims court filings, complaints to police and judgments are available on the web.

Social networks sites, popular with younger web users, are a goldmine of information on hobbies, favorite movies, and relationships.

Social networks often post photos of others in the network linking personal information about your friends, cyber and otherwise.

Clients can determine what groups you belong to--who is your favorite sports team, your favorite political and social causes, musical tastes, sexual orientation, etc., and it's not to hard to track your whereabouts with a check of the leisure sites for your town.

Sometimes there is slanderous information about you on the web on a blog or other social network site.

Sometimes there is negative information about someone with your same name.

The younger you are, the more tech savvy you are, the more likely it is that you've willingly traded your privacy for a presence on the web.

The best way to control the information is to be pro-active--create your own web page so it appears first. Research shows that the average web user views 1.9 pages of results per search term.

If you have a social networking site, use the privacy controls to limit access to your most special friends and family.

Be aggressive about slanderous material about you on the web. This article suggested a WSJ story of Feb. 17, 2008, "Starting out: washing your Web face," by S.
Banjo.

Regularly conduct a web search of your own name, in all its forms with quotation marks.

I'm not sure I blogged about it, or just wrote the supervisor, but after I discovered pleasant little bios and photos online about the staff of a day care center that included the names of the women's husbands and children and their interests, I was able to find all sorts of information about them using public information from the county auditor and local newspaper stories about their children and husbands (sports schedules and leisure events). If I'd been a stalker or burglar, everything I needed was available within a few keystrokes. I urged the supervisor to take down the personal information about her employees because there's way too much information out there about all of us, including where the windows are on our houses, and the access roads. Sometimes when I look up a person, all I find are donor records for their university or favorite charity from the latest newsletter. That often supplies age (graduation date) and residence. Certainly an idea of assets and interests. But what a search that could start in the hands of the wrong person. Church newsletters are online these days, with home phone numbers for the head of this or that ministry and committee, as well as photos! These photos turn up in Google Image searches. And on and on.