Data Mining for Me

 

Image Courtesy of Vecteezy

Data Mining My Name 💣

When I enlisted on a data mine of my name, I was skeptical because 1) I had blocked my information on "Been Verified" and 2) a previous search of myself on Facebook and Google had previously yielded no results; both of these had been concerns of mine as I don't want students to find me online. To get started on my search, I looked at a list of sites provided by Nicole Zumpano and was skeptical of several as I don't interact on them (i.e. Twitter/X and YouTube), or I haven't established an account with them (i.e. LinkedIn). I had previously searched My Life and yielded no results. Nevertheless, I decided to begin with a site that brought back a lot of hits when I had searched for old friends. This site was Intelius. When I got to the homepage, I saw the image below. 

Leon, Jennifer. "Look up Anyone!" Intelius, www.intelius.com. 

Naturally, I typed in my first name, last name, city, and state and clicked "Search." When the search began, I was asked four screening questions to help the service refine its results; the first two were whether I had ever lived in Sarasota, FL or River Forest, IL, respectively. After responding "No," I answered "Yes" to the next two questions - being an only child and over 31 years old. Those two questions were definitely the clinchers. My search results are featured in the image below. My name occurs in the middle of the three that are listed.

Leon, Jennifer. Results of name search on Intelius. www.intelius.com.

                      

Upon viewing this page, the fingerprint took me by surprise until I realized that it looked like the others; this is likely a selling feature of the website. The accurate information I found were the first three places of residence and the first two names listed as relatives (Luis Leon, my father and Sandra Leon, my mother). One relative appears partially correct as I have a cousin named Melissa, but her last name isn't Leon. When I searched on a few other websites, I learned that my previous residences in Memphis, TN and Warrensburg, MO (which date back to the late 1990s and spanned a year and a half together) would follow me. I also found some old land telephone lines that I had very briefly when I purchased my condo in 2008. It's reasonable for me to think that residence and telephone number history definitely follow you. 

What baffled me is that none of the websites yielded an email address or username except for one, which I found really surprising (perhaps a complete report would've revealed more). I had completely forgotten I had even owned this email handle and rarely used it from what I remember. However, this is proof that information can be permanent, and I'll discuss more about this after I present the rest of my results; several were similar, which leads me to wonder where these databases retrieve their address history and more importantly, their information about possible relatives. So far, my parents have been the only two accurate relatives I've seen.

Below are my results from True People Search. As one can see, my faux relative, "Antonio Leon" has become "Antonio Leonortega" and a prior false town of residence, Berwyn, IL, is also on this search as well. I taught in Cicero School District 99 and shopped at North Riverside Park Mall on a few occasions, but that's as close as I've ventured out to this south suburb.

sumar.wiyono. "Charlie Brown Good Grief Wallpaper." Wallpapers.com, 

https://wallpapers.com/wallpapers/charlie-brown-good-grief-4e4v6zfv9a71lbkq.html. 

Accessed 17 June 2024.

Results similar to Intelius and True People Search could be found at TruthFinder, PeopleFinders, Family Tree Now, and Instant Checkmate. The results are shown in the next four images. A list of prior cities and states of residence (only the first 3 are correct!) and a list of possible relatives (only Luis Leon, Sandra Leon, and technically, Melissa Leon) are correct.

Leon, Jennifer. Results from search on TruthFinder. https://www.truthfinder.com/.

Leon, Jennifer. Results from search on People Finder, https://www.peoplefinder.com/.

Leon, Jennifer. Results from search on Family Tree Now, https://www.familytreenow.com/. 

Leon, Jennifer. Results from search on Instant Checkmate, https://www.instantcheckmate.com/.

As mentioned a little earlier, what really surprised me was the one old email username that was found through PeekYou. The information in the top left corner of the image below reminds me of my late 20s (ouch!) when I was a lot sassier and played upon my first name. Even though there is no other defining information besides a city of residence, SOMETHING tells me this might be me. 😏 (in case you haven't located it, it's the "jennzebel" glaring out in red, which is humorously preceded by "ALSO KNOWN AS." I promise on my Highest Honor that it was JUST a username and a brief one at that!

Leon, Jennifer. Results from search on PeekYou, https://www.peekyou.com/.

To conclude, I found complete information on myself (almost scarily!) with very little "digging" on US Public Data Search and ZabaSearch. The list of possible relatives was so long on US Public Data Search that I wonder if they pulled information from Ancestry. It is worth noting that True People Search and Nuwber pulled up complete reports of my address information with True People Search having one of my aliases, which is Jenny M Leon; True People Search also had the correct dates listed for my residency in my condo (2008 - Present). It is worth noting that I didn't locate my information on Illinois Teacher Salaries even though I know there is a good chance it is there. I have stumbled upon this information about a few friends and colleagues when searching for them, however. 

Even though I'm not worried that I've left too much of a mark on the Internet (my absence on social media gives me a little hope for now), it is obvious that information CAN stay there. "Jennzebel" was a bit of a surprise to me, to say the least. 

Image courtesy of Alamy