Take the “Google Yourself” challenge and see which of your secrets live online

Googling Yourself may sound like a narcissistic act but when you are building a startup or a personal brand, you don’t want the past secrets to haunt you in future. You may also want to keep in check what information is available about you online so that you can keep your private and online life separate. An extensive infographic released by backgroundchecker gives some alarming figures about the kind of personal information you can reveal online knowingly or unknowingly.

So, if you are curious about what information is available on the internet about you, simply put your name in quotation marks, like so; “Rizwan Anwer”. If you feel the results are too generic or otherwise not relevant, make it interesting by adding other details like city, e.g. “Rizwan Anwer Lahore”. This will help you get an idea on your online identities, photos, or other materials on the internet. You can then further look into how to make them disappear before it gets into the wrong hand.

Here are some statistics and highlights taken from the infographic attached:

1. 12% of people say their phone number is visible online.
2. 33% of people say their birthday is available online by searching Google.
3. 42% of people say a photo of them is available.
4. 70% of internet users with a college degree have googled themselves. 43% of those with a high school degree or less have searched their name in Google.
5. 81% of millennials say they have searched the name of their date on either Facebook or Google before going out with them.
6. 79% of job recruiters say they screen job candidates by reviewing information about the candidate online.
7. 70% of internet users have searched online for information about other people.

Now that you have seen the perils of having your data ‘out there’, what did you find about yourself on Google? Which past site was the biggest culprit? let us know in the comments section!