Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m paranoid. Seriously. I look over my shoulder when I walk home at night. I don’t accept phone calls from numbers I don’t know. It’s not a fear thing; it’s more irritation that I can be tracked down.

Which is why I am fascinated by all the little internet thingies that claim to be able to find personal information (location, phone number, etc.) if you only just plug in the name. I mean, are they accurate? Are some better than others?

I tried to use some of them to track down an old friend, but given that old friend’s name is Jen Jones, I had way too many results with no real way to tell if I was getting the right person.

So I decided to test some of them with my own name (I mean, I know my own information, right? I hope?) and here are the results:

Intelius People Search

There were a LOT of possible me’s, but, voila! There I was, nestled in between my name dopplegangers, there for the world to see. It even listed my correct age (and my middle initial!). However, they made a little mistake–I’m listed as living in my hometown, where I haven’t lived for over 6 years and definitely haven’t been registered at for almost 3. Still, pretty impressive. Read More »