People search engines - the information out there about you

If you try searching your name online on various search engines or specialized people search engines, you may find your age, birth date, address, telephone numbers, and other information available in the phone directory or other public documents. (Hopefully that doesn't surprise you.) You may also find a link to your web site, or other public web pages that have listed your name.

Many people search engines also now search what's called the deep web - pages that general search engines generally can't reach. Some examples are pipl.com, mylife.com, and peekyou.com. These sites will search social networking sites such as facebook.com, linkedin.com, myspace.com, friendster.com, amazon.com, classmates.com, etc. I found that on mylife.com and peekyou.com (which I had never accessed before), I already had a profile available to the public about me! peekyou.com even displayed my picture and some interests/hobbies which it probably took from my friendster.com profile page (which I haven't used in years and forgot still existed.)

That's right! Information that anyone on the internet may find about you (by easily using a search engine) might have been made available by YOU! Anything on your public profile pages - your pictures, your location information, blogs, a list of your friends and others in your network, etc, could all be public and searchable by others.

Just think, anything put on your public Facebook page or myspace page could potentially be accessed, saved forever, and made available to others (forever). If you want to prevent this from happening, you should make your profile pages on social networking sites and other public pages private, or at least make private those pieces of information you do not want others to know about!