Googled yourself recently? 47 Percent of internet users have

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I ran across some pretty interesting information released by Digital Footprints. Digital footprints is a project from Pew Internet and American Life Product. They have released findings this week which show that 47% of Internet users have Google their name to see exactly what is out there about them. This has rose 22% percent since 2002. Now I understand that people are worried about their security and their information that is online but why a study? Why do this non-profit organizations spend so many man hours researching such irrelevant stuff?.

We already know that people search their names online each day, you do not have to get a huge grant from the government to tell us this!

As I went on to read a bit more I found some of this information

Fully 60% of internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available about them online.
Similarly, the majority of online adults (61%) do not feel compelled to limit the amount of information that can be found about them online. Just 38% say they have taken steps to limit the amount of online information that is available about them.
Online adults can be divided into four categories based on their level of concern about their online information and whether or not they take steps to limit their online footprint:

• Confident Creatives are the smallest of the four groups, comprising 17% of online adults. They say they do not worry about the availability of their online data, and actively upload content, but still take steps to limit their personal information.

• The Concerned and Careful fret about the personal information available about them online and take steps to proactively limit their own online data. One in five online adults (21%) fall into this category.

• Despite being anxious about how much information is available about them, members of the Worried by the Wayside group do not actively limit their online information. This group contains 18% of online adults.

• The Unfazed and Inactive group is the largest of the four groups—43% of online adults fall into this category. They neither worry about their personal information nor take steps to limit the amount of information that can be found out about them online. Digital Footprints

The rest was pretty much blah, blah stuff that we already know, I can’t believe how long this PDF is and how many facts are listed. After reading this I felt the same was that I feel when a solicitor calls be on the phone asking me the dumbest questions. I probably would have, no excuse me I would have hung up on them if they called me!