This assignment was very interesting to do and I found out that while there is not a large amount of personal information about me easily findable online, with what is available about me and aggregate data that is available for many social groups that I fit into one can construct a pretty accurate profile of things I might be potentially interested in. While searching online for personal information about myself I was able to find my resume with contact information on LinkedIn and was able to see some pages I had liked on Facebook. When I searched for my personal email I was able to find several websites that I had created accounts on, thus illustrating what types of online communities I identify and interact with and what some of my interests are. Using this information it would be fairly straightforward for a company to create a profile of my interests and be able accurately choose which ads to show me based on those interests.
Although I could not find my address publicly viewable online many websites require you to enter an address so it is certainly possible that an advertising company would know my address. When I looked up my address I found that I fit into a lot of the statistical majorities for my area. I am part of the majority ethnicity of my home area, fit into the majority age group, and fit into several of the majority demographic measures. Similarly, I fit into many statistical majorities here in Madison as well. By looking at all of this data it would be fairly straightforward for a company to create a fairly accurate profile for me and be able to fairly accurately gauge what sort of advertisements would appeal to me. I found it very interesting that even with a fairly minimal amount of personal information it was still possible to create a decently accurate profile of me based on that personal information in conjunction with aggregate data.
After doing this assignment I am very curious as to what information on me advertising companies actually have. Although I could not find a publicly viewable page with my address on it, I know that I have had to enter it online for various websites before and it is very possible that this data was sold to an advertising company. While I'm often conscious about what information I put on a specific social network or website, when you combine the data from all of those individual sites along with any data I may have entered on other websites it becomes clear that someone could make a very robust and accurate profile of me. In the future I am definitely going to keep this activity in mind when I enter personal data online because I now have a better idea of how easy it is for an individual, is to get to it and it is likely even easier for large companies to do.
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