Man, this is kind of frightening

I typed my own name into Google just to see what would happen and I found out that an infiniate number of people have my same first and last name.

More frightening. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/aaa.gif I typed my name in and had no matches /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/awman.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohgeez.gif

There was a thing a while back on the art bell show about a time traveler. I believe his name was john titor. He said if you wanted to leave yourself a message in any time post it to the internet. If you search his name, you find lots of stuff.

My name is unique so no seach on google has brought up another person with my same first and last name.
But it seems my first name seems to show up in a lot of psyche papers..

I share the same name as a fictional character in a little-known short-lived 70's TV show. There are also (as far as I can tell), 5 other people with the same name. One has a PhD in Psychology, and one is a policeman. Nothing too spectacular.

My wife, on the other hand, is one-of-a-kind. NOBODY shares her name. My last name is a little unusual (only two famous people have it -- one quite famous actor, and one used-to-be baseball player). My wife's first name is very unusual.

As a test, type your social security number into Google and see what turns up. Hopefully nothing. Just for grins, type your phone number in. Google will probably offer a map to your house.

I did my social security number and got the zip code of a city, no thats scary! did my name and found nothing for my self but did find stuff on my half brother

[ QUOTE ]
yuandrew said:
I typed my own name into Google just to see what would happen and I found out that an infiniate number of people have my same first and last name.

[/ QUOTE ]
That's kind of cool, at least the way I look at it.

I am occasionally asked to find someone. Usually a family member, but not always. I don't do it for any money, it's kind of a last-resort thing. I've found quite a few.

The hardest ones are invariably the ones with the most common names. I once agreed to look for a guy with a very distinctive name and I thought it would be easy. It turns out that the name was shared by a major league baseball player which generated thousands of false positives everywhere. If I hadn't been told that the target was an opera buff I NEVER would have found him.

Once in a particularly sad story I had to find a man with the same name as a famous dead movie star. Thousands of hits. I didn't find him, but I found his father, which was good enough.

One that I was never able to find was a guy whose name was JUST LIKE that of a very famous university. It wasn't CAL STATE but...another STATE. Everything I looked for generated thousands of hits. I knew what he did for a living but if I qualified the search in any way I just get bazillions of hits for some particular department or activity connected to the school. I still look for him when I get bored.

To me, at least, it seems that the people with the most Internet privacy fall into one of three categories:

1.-- They have a common name.

2.-- They have a name that is very difficult to enter into a database correctly. This used to be more true than it is today. Now you can write a PERL bot to search for typos and mis-spellings.

3.-- They really work at it.

To give you an idea of how quirky this can be, it is possible to dot all your I's and cross all your T's and still be tracked by your SETI@HOME involvement. Ooookaaaay.

Vewy intewesting...could you try finding some old friends for me?

I typed my first and last names into Google, and it says there are 38,900 pages with that name on them.
But when I add my website's name to the search, 544 pages appear.

Let me try my SSN and see what happens...BRB...no documents. That's a relief. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Let's try my home and cellular telephone numbers now...BRB...three pages with my home number on them (one is a CPF page, one is the Google listing, and one from my LED website), and two pages with my cellular number on them (both from another one of my websites).

I did my name, and a couple hits came from stuff I did years ago! My phone number was in one hit.

Oh well, 1984 is here!

[ QUOTE ]
2dim said:
Vewy intewesting...could you try finding some old friends for me?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a pretty short list of people I do it for. Most of it is by referral. I have to talk to the party's and absolutely know their identity. No offense, but I have to be very sure of who someone is and why they want to find someone before I can look. Most of it is last-resort stuff like long lost kids, long lost parents, siblings, etc. Some of it's pretty sad. It can be very compelling.

The quickest way to get a handle on most people is online white pages. I've found more people through their phones than everything else put together. If you can get good at just searching various white pages you should be able to find 75% of your old chums -- because most of them won't be trying to hide.

Phone data is your best, first shot. Keep notes on hits from different directories. When you think you have a hit, remember that phone listings are often two years out of date. You can always call if you think it's him. Since the phone records can be so old, you may get 4-5 hits on the same name at the same address from different directories:

J Johnson 555-5555, 123 Some St, Sometown, VT
John Johnson 555-5555, 123 Some St, Sometown, VT
John M Johnson 555-5555, 123 Some St, Sometown, VT
John and Linda Johnson 555-5555, 123 Some St, Sometown, VT
Sally Johnson 555-8888, 123 Some St, Sometown, VT

The above example would be really good hits with a high likelihood that he's still there. If all those listings were somewhere in the system at the same time it would look like some were older, some were newer and it looks like finally their teenage daughter got old enough to have her own phone. It could also mean that the daughter's phone was disconnected up to two years ago when she left home for college. These would be really good phone hits.

Phones will probably give you the greatest return for your effort if you're looking for old friends.

You don't know common unless you have the last name BROWN!

[ QUOTE ]
coachbigdog said:
You don't know common unless you have the last name BROWN!

[/ QUOTE ]
I spent a long time looking for a 'Smith' once. I also knew his age, first and middle names, wife's first name, the city he lived in and I had a general idea of the work he did. Never did find him.

Apparently there's a football player, an author and a fairly good artist that share my name among others. Usually it's hard to find people with the last name of "Wolf" without using the double f's or an "e" at the end.

Thanks, but we're talking about 30 years ago. The women probably married and the guy may have changed his name. It was just me reminiscing about long-lost friends and days gone by.

If you're looking for women you knew you almost have to buy DMV records. ALL 50 states have women cross referenced by their maiden names, otherwise a woman could re-marry and slip away from her DWIs, etc. You could probably start with the Department of State website for the state you knew her in. Find the DMV from there and get the info directly from them (usually only $5-10). New state privacy laws are drying some of this up.

Another trick for finding the current last name of a female friend from the past is to search for obits of her relatives in her home town newspaper's online edition. This will often yield up not only her current married name but also that of her husband and kids and the city and state in which they currently live. If an obit doesn't give you the full story it can often give you many bits of info which can really narrow the search.

If the guy has changed his name you probably don't have a chance. If he's hiding from anyone for any reason he's probably made other changes as well that will make him harder to find. Still not impossible, but it will take longer and will require more resources for a chance of success.

Every person is different so every search is different...that's what makes it interesting.

Hi all,
Looks like I win by loosing.

When I type in my (real) name, a couple of others pop up.

One is an editor for a gay mens magazine. One that markets to large fuzzy gay men, called American Grizzily. He also seems to live where I used to live on Long Island.

I can't make this up.

Im wondering if this has ruined some job interviews.

Later dudes
Aren't you glad your not me.

Jack Crow in Iraq