Blog #4 - Mistaken Identity

An identity duplication stood in the way of getting any results about myself through Google. My full name is Dean Michael Knetter. Coincidentally, the former Dean of the UW Business school is Michael Knetter. Thus, his title and my name are identical, and any search for "Dean Knetter" returns pages of results about the business dean. (After my enrollment and many misguided emails, we met to settle our differences, and found out we are fifth cousins.) In the video search however, I beat him out with old Spanish class movie projects being the top result. Other than that though, there was not much about myself. I am thankful for that. I realize that many websites like Facebook and Google make money by selling our information, but that encroachment on our privacy still makes me uneasy at times. Being able to fend it off in any way, even via a more famous Dean Knetter, is fine by me.

One rather eye raising result though, were information aggregate sites. For a fee, they allow you to search for someone and view their relatives, address, income, etc. I had already removed myself and family from one of these databases, but there are many more out there. They claim all information they have is already public knowledge, but I'm not sure if they obey the privacy settings we put on that information. I'd be interested to know more about how these sites gather their info, and the (il)legality of their practice.