Nearly 50 percent of Internet users have searched for their own name online, but few regularly monitor their online presence with great regularity. Even more people — 53 percent of Internet users to be exact — have searched online for information about personal and business contacts.
So says the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s “Digital Footprints” report. The report also says that what’s online about you could come back to haunt you, especially in job hunting.
“The cumulative traces of our online activity are more visible in the age of Web 2.0,” Mary Madden, a co-author of the report, said in a statement. “The more content we voluntarily contribute to the public or semipublic corners of the Web, the more we become not only findable, but knowable.”
Reuniting and Reigniting
Indeed, more powerful search engines have made it easier to find a match for a personal name search, and the “participatory Web” has made those searches more interesting. The increasing popularity of blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and other similar sites has increased the size of people’s digital footprint, but few adult Internet users have made digital identity management a routine part of their online lives.
According to the report, most Internet users are unconcerned about the extent of the data available about them. Some 60 percent of Internet users say they are not worried about how much of their information is online, while 38 percent of Internet users say they have taken steps to limit the amount of online information that is available about them.
It likely will not come as a surprise to know that recruiters routinely use the Internet to find out what is said online about job candidates. Jo Parente, a legal recruiter at Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks PC in Boston, searches for background information on candidates online. She called…