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# System prepended metadata

title: Privacy footprint

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# Privacy footprint

Perusing the Internet is a lot like being Hansel and Gretel — you’re leaving breadcrumbs everywhere. And the Internet is a lot like a chipmunk storing up for winter — it’ll eat anything. You look behind you and poof! All the crumbs are gone and you have no idea where you’ve been or where you’re going or what you’ve left behind. The only one who knows is that dang chipmunk, and he’s pretty elusive. 

![alt text](https://media.giphy.com/media/ZuCJ9OzW9dBnO/giphy.gif)

The Internet, whether we like it or not, is storing our information just like that chipmunk is storing our breadcrumbs. How aware are we of this fact, though? McGoogan (2016) discusses the shock she, as well as many others, experienced when she found out that Facebook knew her phone number without her having explicitly given Facebook that information. To me, it seemed rather naïve to think that Facebook wouldn’t know your phone number, especially given the fact that you access the app on your phone, and that Facebook already knows nearly everything anyways. Why wouldn’t they know your phone number, especially when you’re using your *mobile* phone to use Facebook? It seems implausible that the two wouldn’t be connected, and sure enough Facebook can access your phone number via the “phone or tablet that you’re using.” (McGoogan, 2016) One thing I did not expect Facebook to be able to do was allow others to query for me by my phone number. After reading McGoogan, I went into my Facebook settings. I hadn’t changed them or even looked at them… ever. 

![](https://i.imgur.com/OyvuPGq.png)

I immediately changed who could search me by my phone number (which Facebook does have), if search engines can link to my Facebook profile, and who can see my friends list. I know that these small changes don’t protect a majority of my privacy though, and that I’ve (in some ways) given up my own privacy rights by simply parlaying into the vast networks of social media and the Internet as a whole, something that I do not think McCoogan acknowledges in his discussion. 

![](https://i.imgur.com/y3sczlg.png)

Kernighan (2017) argues that the ever-evolving, all-pervasive knowledge of the Internet has its humble roots in search. This makes perfect sense — if search engines are able to crawl and gather information about millions of web pages and store that data, of course they might fall upon a webpage that has information about you. Then, just like the chipmunk, it’ll store that breadcrumb. Concepts concerning how the Internet queries our information aren’t difficult. The difficultly comes in at the intersection of privacy, the Internet, and regulation. The Internet is not going to stop gathering our information, we just have to figure out a way to regulate how it can use this information.

To see how much these search engines know about me, I searched myself on [Google](https://www.google.com/search?q=emma+cubellis&oq=emma+cubellis&aqs=chrome..69i57l2j0l3j69i61.4234j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). 

![](https://i.imgur.com/p5lDyC0.png)

Most of the information I got was related to my job and the articles I had written for [BookBub](https://www.bookbub.com/blog/author/emma-cubellis) as well as another site ([She Reads](https://shereads.com/author/emma-cubellis)). It also had my volleyball [statistics](https://www.maxpreps.com/athlete/emma-cubellis/sCKj4FWFEeW-8KA2nzwbTA/default.htm) (spolier: They're terrible). For [photos](https://www.google.com/search?q=emma+cubellis&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiv9ZSX3dXlAhUKmuAKHWmCDEYQ_AUIEygC&biw=1038&bih=592&dpr=2), there were those included on the BookBub blog, and some of my graduation, which had appeared in local newspapers. 

![](https://i.imgur.com/9g3yegO.jpg)

All of the information that Google scraped about me was rather innocuous. And the information that other services like [Intelius](https://www.intelius.com/people-search/Emma-Cubellis?fullname=emma%20cubellis) had on me was nothing that isn't already public information. It was a little concering, though, that Intelius had my home location. Then again, I suppose one could find that in a Yellow Pages (back in the day).

![](https://i.imgur.com/PRloMEJ.png)

As for the deeper depths of Google, it had nothing on me. No search activity. No maps timeline. Odd, but good (?).

![](https://i.imgur.com/1gkxHSZ.png)

This information being public doesn't worry me so much as the personal information stored in the Cloud. I, in truth, have no idea how much the Cloud knows, or how to stop it from knowing all those things (without ceasing my use of Cloud based services or really the Internet in general, which is virtually impossible today). McGoogan mentions that for sensitive information, such as emailing between his students, he uses non-cloud based services. But what if my school email is Google? Not to mention that my other Yahoo email is attached to my Apple account, which has its own major cloud. Couple that with the fact that my phone stores my entire life on it (hyperbole? Maybe not today), and that’s an Apple product, which is therefore connected to the Cloud. 


So, is any of my information really mine anymore? Probably not. And while the EU does have laws on whether or not companies can collect information on you, “anything goes” in the US (Kernighan, p. 195). It seems unfair to me that employers can't explciity ask about your race, religion, etc., but that the Internet makes that information more than accessible to employers. But how do we go about regulating that? It seems virtually impossible to stop employers from looking at our social media (unless we're going to monitor them forever). Then there is the issue of public versus truly private information. As Kernighan states, some information is, and always has been, public, like public records. But in the digital age, when everything can be made public, how do we regulate privacy without compromising freedom? 

I can resign myself to the idea that the Internet will always be picking up my breadcrumbs, but what I can’t accept is a lack of laws protecting my privacy. It should be the job of the government to understand, monitor, and take legal measure to protect its citizens from the Internet, just as it protects them theft. This is simply its virtual form. 



