Even if you're not job-searching, you need to know what information you have out there. It's important for a lot of other reasons, including the fact that your accounts can be compromised by hackers easily if you're not careful about what information gets put online. If you don't believe me, please please PLEASE... read this. And that's just one story
1. Watch Your Passwords... And Your Security Questions
And that's just one story. Be careful with your passwords. Don't use the same password for your bank account, your amazon account, and your facebook. Look at your mom's facebook account. Does she have her maiden name included? If so... (and I can't stress this enough) DO NOT USE THE 'mother's maiden name' SECURITY QUESTION.
If you can find it, so can a hacker. And it will take them 2 minutes to ruin your life.
2. Find Yourself (Online)
For those of you that don't do this, it's always a great idea to spend some time and search for yourself online.
I did. And it paid off.
At first glace I couldn't find much. Searching for the word "Page", regardless of what it's attached to, just comes up with a bunch of old MySpace accounts. (Which is another great account to delete, if you have one.)
Get creative with your searches. Try nicknames. Try searching for your name plus your hometown, your school names, or your clubs or societies. Use quote marks to force it to find someone with your EXACT name (i.e. "Cathy Smith"). I bet you'll find something you weren't expecting!
The one I found actually cracked me up a little, so I thought I'd share. Apparently I was in the newspaper out here last year. The information there looks innocent enough, right?
Wrong. Finding this article means that I now know I cannot use my anniversary date, alma mater, hometown, location of our first home together or parent's names for any security questions. Yikes, right? For the moment I'm not too worried about that particular article... BUT, I'm taking note that it's out there, just in case I ever want that information to be private.
3. Ignoring it Doesn't Mean it Goes Away.
Another great place to find things you may have forgotten is in your old email address.
We all have one. You know, that email that you've abandoned all hope of resurrecting from the spam-infested dark and cobwebbed corners of the interwebs?
Check it.
Back before you knew better, you signed up for some website's giveaway or made an account on a pre-facebook social networking site. That old email address will have plenty of emails stacked up from those sticky-fingered websites. You can then track down each of them and cancel your accounts or remove your email address from mailing lists. It probably won't save your old email address from the spambots, but it will clean up some of your old info that's been needlessly floating around where anyone has access to it.
There are also lots of tools out there that will help you find your floating information. I found this article today, and I'm sure there are lots of others out there as well. I haven't used any yet, but feel free to give them a try and let me know how you like them. (Just make sure you use a trustworthy tool, otherwise you could just end up exacerbating the problem.)
The moral of the story is simple.
Look, and look now. A few hours today could save you weeks of damage control a few months down the road. If you don't look, someone else will. So what are you waiting for?
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