I ran my name through Google just to see what's out there. I could not believe the errors I saw across the board. From an ancestry and geographic standpoint, lots were missing or data was incorrect. Then I looked at current information. That was just as bad. Lots of errors and no way to correct them.

I started looking at this as I'm suddenly being inundated with a lot of robocalls. I found my phone number attached to people I have no clue who they are. I found I'm on the board of companies I have no clue who they are. Is there an autocorrect program out there or better yet an erase me program?

SISO still applies and if there are that many errors at this level think how that populates through every other data analysis based upon erroneous input.

 

Seems I have a fairly common name. Google listed famous people with the same name and not one of the cross-references listed any activity I am in. I know my name is on there as I've done a deep dive before but nothing that concerns me.

 

I guess I still feel that I own my personal information and I should have the ability to correct it or erase it or charge for the use of it. Let the various companies that take my information pay me for the use of it. Someone's making money off of me and I think I should be entitled to either force them to remove it or be paid for it's use.

 

I couldn’t agree more Grant.

 

Maybe it's good not to have too accurate information about yourself, on the Internet?

 

Grant, how did you differentiate your search to eliminate other people with the same name from the search results?

 

George Johnson is way too common. Johnson is the second most common name in the US. My first Google search hit brought up my company, which is a good thing:

https://athanorenvironmental.com/ (Open "services" at top.)

The next several hits were other people. The next hit wanted money to display my profile. Screw that!

 

@Tof Started with my full name. Business name phone # I got hits on all kinds of "who this" websites. Most had a brief description (much of it wrong) and then a place to click and for a nominal sum find out the rest. They had ancestry wrong. My father's name is the same as mine. I found out he was born 3 times. 2 in Rockton Ill (3 years apart same day) and one 3 years later in Manila Philippines. They had friends and past associates I never heard of. My full name is uncommon so it wasn't very hard to do. If you go on facebook you'll find I'm a salmon fishing guide in Scotland.

I got started on this as a vendor asked for a D&B report. We are not D&B members however but I did review our company on their site. The last info in there was from 1998 and all the addresses phone numbers and other was was either incorrect or decades out of date.

 

@fltsfshr Well, I suspect a lot of the teaser bio info on most of those "who is" sites is created by bots and I would expect it to be pretty vague and/or inaccurate. As for Dunn & Bradstreet, they can probably produce a fairly accurate and detailed profile of Dell or Turner Construction or Regions Bank but I wouldn't expect their database on smaller local businesses to be that up-to-date or complete. Data collection efforts, like most business activities, is rooted in good old cost-benefit analysis.

 

I agree but consider this. Find your new favorite AI site and type in "Write a biography of (your name here) born (when you were born) .in (where you were born)
Let me know how you come out.