Data Mine: "Amy Mekeel"
Digital Tattoo
Data Mine
A data mine is when you do a search on a person and find out any information about the person. I began a data mine on myself by doing a traditional Google search by searching first with just my name"Amy Mekeel" in quotes. The first thing that popped up was another Amy Mekeel with the middle initial J. She is a correctional officer, which I am not. The second was my schools' webpage saying I teach 8th grade Math and Social Studies at Heritage Middle school, which is accurate. The third thing that came up was my Pinterest account with my username amymekeel. Next, was a Go Fund Me page for Amanda Sutton on behave of Amy Mekeel, but this was not me. I scrolled through the six pages associated with my name, and only a few were about me. I found information about a 5K and 10K run I participated in a few years ago. It included my results. Yikes! Now everyone can see how slow of a runner I am.🐢
I also found a district webpage that listed my salary. This is actually a question my students recently asked me, "How much money do I make?" I respond with, "that is a personal question." I guess it is out there for them to see if they were to search my name.
One thing that surprised me was when I clicked on Google images. Pictures from a McDonald's fundraiser I participated in with fellow teachers at my old school popped up from 2018. Bear Family Restaurants wrote an article about the fundraiser and added in the photos. Let's just say the photo was not my finest. See the image below. 😂
Image Source: Bear Family Restaurants
Even though I wasn't the one who posted the photo on the internet it made me start thinking about how important it is to teach our children and students about digital tattoos and data mines. This is a great activity to do with my middle schooler so they're aware that, what they put out online is available for everyone to see. I think this concept should be taught in school especially at the middle school age. They need to think twice before they tweet on Twitter, post a video on TikTok, or photo on Instagram. They need to understand that anything they post, especially on social media is out there for the entire world to see within seconds. It can affect them getting into college or even getting a job in the future. Nowadays, people are being held accountable for things they posted 10 years ago. When they may have been in a different time period in their life.
Data Mine Part 2
After I Googled searched my name I began using other sites like Nuwber, Radaris, ZabaSearch, PeekYou, and PeopleFinders. I did find that a lot of the same information appeared when I searched these sites.
My previous addresses: Normal IL where I attended college, Hillside, IL where my first apartment was, and my current home in Chicago, IL
A map to my current house in Chicago.
5 relatives listed: my mom, dad, brother, husband, and father-in-law.
My age: 36.
All of this information is accurate. None of this information surprised me because it is all information that is public knowledge. Since I really do not have any social media except for recently adding a Twitter account, my online presence is somewhat of a ghost.
Hi Amy! Your data mine was similar to some of the data I found on myself. You made me laugh about the data you found on your races. I'd say don't worry! I too found some information from when I was in track in high school (oh boy) - I was slow! - but hey, as long as we tried our best that is all that matters. :) I do have to agree how important it is to teach our children and students about online safety early on because of how prevalent technology is now at such a young age; it's also important that kids know about online safety because as we found out from our own data mines, information can remain online for years upon years and for them the data they publish early on could haunt them later as adults. Thanks for an awesome post and for your thoughts about online safety and digital tattoos!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the in-depth look. I'm happy to hear you are comfortable with your results and also would consider having this conversation with your middle school students.
ReplyDeleteHi Amy,
ReplyDeleteI also had a lot of people pop up with the same name as me. I think it is interesting that that fundraiser picture popped up. When I did my search, I also had a few random photos show up that I thought were on private. They weren't anything I mind anyone seeing, but was still shocked that after all the privacy settings I used, some things still got through. I like the term "digital tattoo" better as well. I think it really represents that whatever you post is on the Internet forever, even if you think you've taken it down. After completing this assignment, I was happy that there wasn't much about me online. Although I did notice it was difficult to find any professional web presence, which is something I really want to work on.
-Kate S.
Hey Amy!
ReplyDeleteLoved the detail about the 5k results. That's too funny. I had a similar reaction looking at my digital footprint and thinking about how embarrassing some of the information was, like an old article I wrote as a sophomore in high school and a blog from my undergrad college's website. Reading your post I realized that it's hard to look at our own information without judging ourselves. I'm sure no one is scanning the internet looking for your 5k results to be like "wow that's not fast" I'm sure if anyone came across that they'd be like "Cool! 5k! Nice!" or "Wow she did a fundraiser, awesome!".