Online Identity

Today’s class was a focus on online identity. We were asked to google and 192 our selves online. I found myself on 192.com quite quickly. The usually details came up, such as, address and all my family members’ names. I guess this would be a useful way to track people down. Then again, would you really track people down? Wouldn’t you just ask them for these details? I found 192.com a useful website for tracking down business numbers and addresses. It’s certainly cheaper than calling 118118; oh yes and recalling them because they failed to send you the text message the first time round. Perhaps 192.com is a start to the end of such information calling centres such as 118118, 118500 etc. Exploring and finding these websites where you can track people, places and everything in between has been interesting but also shocking, like a warning. The internet is increasingly taking over tasks we normally do by phone, in person and letter. I guess in such a developing world where everything is happening so fast we need the internet to make things cheaper and faster.
Alright, so I googled my name by double quoting it (“Nadia Al-Dhahir”) and funnily enough everything that came up was really about me. I have to say, I’ve always had this fantasy where when I would google my name all these important achievements would come up; obviously my own achievements. Clearly it’s a long shot and in a worrying way it’s sort of interesting that I can let people know so much about myslef. Ok, so far I have found my facebook profile, blog and some leftist petitions I have signed in the past. Everything else I found was clearly not related to me because of the different second names, but I have to say I’m honoured to be in the same search as Nadia Commenci. The rest of the class managed to find some odd characters that share their exact name. Light shock and laughter aside, is it possible for us to be mistaken of our true identities? For instance, my fellow student Fahima Ali found her name to support many organisations that she may not be happy to be associated with (she was also apparently a Kurdish woman that burnt herself alive). So here we have a possibility of mix instead of match. If I didn’t know who Fahima really was, if I had just met her once at Starbucks and googled her later that night, would I be too frightened to later approach her and verify her true identity? I mean, after all she was part of some dodgy organisations.