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Survey Says: Almost Half of American Population Googles Themselves

When you browse the Web, do you look for news? Weather? How about a recipe? Or maybe, you are checking yourself out in a Google mirror? Gotcha. A new survey says almost half of the American online adult population has searched for themselves or someone else online.

Digital Journal — According to a new survey, 47 per cent of Americans have searched for information about themselves online. That is up from 22 per cent only five years ago.

When it comes to searching the Net, some surfers also take it to the extreme, with 3 per cent of Pew respondents saying they make a regular habit of looking themselves up. The majority, 74 per cent, said they have only looked for their digital footprints once or twice.

The findings were issued in a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group studying the impact of the Internet. The study discussed the ways in which Internet habits have changed and how Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others have encouraged Web wanderers to share personal info online.

Perhaps most surprising is the amount of personal information online, and the fact most people don’t mind. According to the survey, a whopping 60 per cent of Internet users say they are not worried about how much info about them is available online (should we blame Facebook for this one?). Also, a 61 per cent majority of adults also said they feel no need to limit the amount of info they share online.

The survey said users under the age of 50 were more likely to search for themselves online, along with users who are highly educated and have higher incomes. In addition, most users under the age of 50 (53 per cent) have looked up a friend on the Web.

When searching online, Pew found the following results:
– Roughly one third of Internet users say the following pieces of information are available online: their email address, home address, home phone number, or their employer. One quarter to one third of Internet users say they do not know if those data points are available online.

– One quarter of Internet users say a photo, names of groups they belong to, or things they have written that have their name on it appear online.

– Few Internet users say their political affiliation, cellphone number, or videos of them appear online.

– Fully 87 per cent of self-searchers who locate information connected to their name say that most of what they find is accurate, up significantly from the 74 per cent who reported this
five years ago.

According to the report, women were a tad more likely than men to have Googled someone they were dating or about to meet. However, men are more likely to have checked on a friend, someone in his past or a colleague or competitor.

Job hunters recommend you refrain from posting photos or personal information on the Internet in the event your employer checks up on you online. The Pew report says 11 per cent of employers have looked at a new candidate online before hiring.

The survey was done by telephone with 1,623 Internet users between Nov. 30 and Dec. 30 of 2006. The margin of sampling error for this survey was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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