Data Mine

Data Mine

What I Found and Where I Found It

I decided to dig deep into my digital tattoos and see what was out there on the internet about me. This is something I did for a class in my undergrad program about 10 years ago, so although it was not an entirely new experience, I knew that I had 10 year’s worth of information that would be new. 

Image Source: Gfycat

For my data mine, I went to several sources. Many of these sources would only let me get so far without paying, but even getting as far as I did, I found a lot of interesting information. Below is a list of websites I traveled to for my data mine and what I found.

Google and Google Images: The first place I looked was Google. I decided to Google my first and last name, my nickname and last name, my Instagram handle, my Facebook name, and my phone number to see what appeared. On Google, I found:

• My wedding website (theknot.com) with photos, information about my wedding venue and date, and a story of my relationship with my now husband.

• My wedding registry links (bed bath and beyond, the knot.com, and crate and barrel)

• My school district’s Advisory Task Force web page: a committee that I joined during the Covid-19 school year

• The webpage announcing the grant that I won through the District 39 Educational Foundation 

• Links to Prezzi presentations from undergraduate assignments

• Photos of my husband and I from our wedding website

• When I Googled my Instagram handle, my information did not come up but a few of my friend’s Instagram profiles appeared 

• I Googled my Facebook name along with the word “Facebook”, but my profile did not appear in the search engine results. 

YouTube: After Google, I went to YouTube and typed in my name and then my nickname to see what came up. The only thing that I was able to find was an old college (undergraduate) assignment from 2011. 

After going through Google and YouTube, I decided to check out several different “people search” websites. The websites I checked for my data mine were: Check People, Fast People Search, True People Search, Instant Checkmate, Nuwber, Radaris, and Classmates. Most of the same information showed up on each of those websites. They showed my name, my hometown, that my mom, dad, brother, maternal grandparents, and maternal uncle were relatives, my birth month and birth year, my old house phone number and my parent’s current address (listed as my address). The exceptions to this information were Nuwber which I did not find a listing of myself on, and Classmates. On Classmates I found information about my high school graduation year as well as many classmates that I graduated with. I did not find any information about myself personally and I did not see any pictures of myself on there either. 

Thoughts About My Findings

I was not too surprised about my findings from my data mine. Because I completed this activity in my undergraduate program, I was not shocked to find the public information that I did. There was also not a ton of new information since my last data mine. With the exception of my wedding website and the photos that went along with it, I have continued to keep a pretty private digital tattoo. I am not very active on social media websites and when I do not post, I. keep everything very private. I like to make it very hard for people to find my personal profiles online and I have most of my settings set to “private”, “friends only”, or “friends of friends only” for all of my social media. This gives allows me to have distance between my personal and professional life because parents and former students are not able to find my personal profiles online. 

One thing that did surprise me was the information about my family members. I realized that only my maternal family was showing up, but that is because both of my maternal grandparents as well as my maternal uncle have passed away. Their public obituaries list me as their loved one, allowing these sites to connect us. I thought it was also interesting that although my wedding website was the first link to come up in my Google search, I was listed as “not married” on all of the people search databases. My husband was also never listed as a relative of mine and he did not come up at all with the exception of our wedding website and wedding registry. 

I’m sure that in another 10 years if I were to conduct another data mine on myself, there would be more information. I feel that more in my life will change in the next 10 years than has changed in the past 10 years. These changes will likely cause more public information about me to pop up online.

What Our Students Should Know

Kids should learn at a young age how to conduct a data mine on themselves or someone else. It is one thing to tell kids about the impact a digital tattoo can have on someone, and it is another thing to prove it. By the time a student is old enough to read and conduct meaningful research (maybe around 4th grade), they are old enough to start to understand data mines and digital tattoos. I think that it is our job as teachers to teach them these skills and share this knowledge with them. 

Image Source: Twitter

Each year there is a Digital Citizenship Week that my school uses as an opportunity to teach K-4th grade about digital safety, digital citizenship, and digital etiquette. This would be the perfect week to embed teachings about digital tattoos and how to conduct a data mine. Teaching kids how to find information about themselves online is an important skill so that they are aware of what everyone else is able to find out about them.