Managing Your Personal Profile on the Web

With all of the social networking sites available, it can quickly become annoying filling out all of your information for every site, then pulling updates across sites whenever there is a change.

 

I discovered AtomKeep a few weeks ago, which allows you to import your information from your most complete profile, then copy it across to all of your social networking sites.  An incredibly handy web app if you are managing any amount of profiles more than two!

 

Here's the thing: it doesn't discriminate between professional and personal.   So suddenly my "LinkedIn" professional profile became intertwined with my "Facebook" personal one.  Which, caused me to wonder, "why does it matter?"

 

In a digital world, people are living much more integrated lives, blurring the lines between personal and professional.  Which if you think about it can be a good thing.  In a Christian culture where we strive for authenticity and transparency, having open windows and doors into all of our worlds allows that to happen.  Also, the connecting nature of the digital world creates personal connections in professional circles and professional connections in personal ones, which again, can be a very good thing.

 

So, where does that leave the matter of privacy?

 

In my professional world, you have my full name. And using that, you can Google just about any amount of information about me.  You can find out where I work, which publications I write for, which websites I've designed and I'm relatively sure you can find out where I graduated high school and the valuation of my house. 

 

However, in my personal world, I share photos of family, friends, blog about my daily life and Twitter my whereabouts at any given moment.  There are reasons to protect this information against random access by not connecting my full name to that data.  

 

All of that to say, it is a good idea to think about the privacy issue and figure out where your comfort zone is. 

 

Of course, the easiest way to find out what is out there is to look.  Search for  yourself.  (C'mon, admit it.  You have already done this.)   Beyond that, you can also set up daily monitoring using Google Alerts which will e-mail you with whatever search terms you are tracking.  You can set up multiple alerts…one for your name….one for your church…one for the release of that new camera you've wanted…. Any phrase you want to track.

 

Another place to look for information about you is on ZoomInfo.  ZoomInfo is an indiscriminate aggregator of information on the web that creates people and company profiles based on it.  Because ZoomInfo currently  tends to show up high in the search engines, it is a good idea to log on and manage your profile periodically to make sure it stays correct.    For the most part, the errors are innocuous. (On my profile this morning, ZoomInfo had me working at Crystal Cathedral simply because I wrote an article about it.)

 

This new world of unlimited information is changing the rules about what is known about us.  And though shredders make us feel better about protecting ourselves, the truth is, there is an awful lot out there that we simply don't have control over.  (Have you given any thought to what it means that face recognition is now part of Picasa Web Albums?)

 

From a Christian perspective, it means that we absolutely have to be who we say we are.  Inconsistencies will be revealed quickly.  On the flip side, this can be very positive.  I recently did a web search to find a college friend who I learned is Jack Ingram's drummer.  In all of the information on the web about Pete, almost every reference had a comment about how he remarkably lives his faith.   (So much so that it resulted in Jack Ingram writing a song called "Pete, Jesus, and Me.")  Now that is an incredible testimony. One that makes it way beyond the walls of the church.

 

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