First things first, start to secure your identity.

When you have concerns about your privacy, both online and off, it is important to check out the companies that are using it and to see if there is anything you can do to keep this information more secure. One of the first places to check on your information would be the big search engines - let's say for the sake of simplicity - Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Type in your first and last name to see what shows up. The first time you do this you might find there are a lot of sites you are connected to that you may not have known about. If you have a really common name - John Smith, you might not see a whole lot about you personally, and it might require the city you live in or some additional information that would be unique to you (ie John Smith Atlanta GA accountant). This first step is a lot easier for people with unique names but the steps that come after will all be the pretty much the same.

One of the most interesting things I found when I searched for myself (secure internet searching, BTW, is a whole other topic of discussion I will cover later) was an Amazon "Profile" the company had made with information like MY FIRST AND LAST NAME, REVIEWS, WISHLIST, and my LOCATION. Don't get me wrong... I LOVE AMAZON. They are probably the only "brand" I am loyal to but I was really upset that all of this information was out there in the open for anyone to find. It was really unsettling actually. This information can be turned "off" (see link above) but this was one of those times when I was really surprised a company would just make everything available "out of the box". It should be the other way around - I think so, anyway. This would be a case where a company I use and have - even if it was inadvertently - gave "permission" to share this information with others. Facebook is another. So is Twitter. LinkedIn is another (but, ironically, I refuse to link to them). A lot of sites you actually use will have privacy settings you need to review and make changes to. FB (Facebook) is notorious for making a lot of changes and adding complexity to this process but other companies you knowingly use might have similar settings you want to disable or "lock down" from public view. I will discuss how to do this later (and most of the information is available on like a million other places).

There will also be a lot of sites that you may not have heard of. Sites like mylife, profileengine, zoominfo, radaris, peeepl, pipl, peoplefinders, switchboard, intelius.... the list goes on and on. There are a TON of sites out there who might have created a "Profile" for you without your consent or knowledge and these are the ones that are of the most concern (at least to me). I am appalled that companies can just create a profile for you - with whatever information that may be "publicly available" (many times the information is made available because the site where it was entered was not clear enough about how to keep it private). When I did my first search I found that I was ALL over the internet. Which is not all that surprising considering I have worked on the internet for many years... but a lot of the sites were "personal information aggregators (gatherers)" whose sole job is to find out as much as they can, as fast as they can - to try and make as much money as they can off of your personal information. I dislike HATE these companies. They do not have my consent to use my information and likely never would or will. It is not so much about them making money - I could care less. It is more about the control of my personal information and what I want to make available to the world. I know when I use many forms of social media my information is not private.... well, I know it NOW (I didn't always thus why there was so much information for these companies to "find")... and that is a risk I take each time I post something to a site I am a willing participant. In the case of PIAs (personal information aggregators) no choice is given - its finders keepers... 

In any case - the first step to starting the process is finding what information is out there and securing what you can. After you secure your social media accounts and prevent future abuse of your private information come back and see how to deal with the PIAs (hopefully I will have it done by then)!