One of the websites someone mentioned on Twitter was a service called Pipl.com, a people search for the web. I do like to periodically see what comes up when I Google myself but I was curious what would this people search find on me if I entered my name and country. Luckily it doesn’t really give out any information I would not want people to know, or did it?
When I plugged in my first and last name and left the default Country entered (CA) I got a large amount of information spat back out at me in a couple of seconds. Pipl.com performed a deep web search for whatever it could find that made reference to my name. Granted, everything that came back was not related to me but I did take up a lot of the ‘online’ references such as Blog posts, Websites and a more surprising find Newsgroup entries.
As you can see from the above photo it even crawled looking for photos that might reference “Tyler Ingram’. I was glad to see that it could not find reference to where I live, or email addresses in which to get in contact with me. If you want to get in touch with me you can use my Contact form, follow me on Twitter or if you really want to I can be found on Facebook.
So I mentioned something about newsgroups. Do people still use them? They sure do and Google has indexed the newsgroups from back in time when I was using them, which was back in 1995. I’ve technically been on the ‘net’ since 1992 but who’s counting anyway.
So what sort of things did I write back on newsgroups almost 15 years ago? Well let’s take a look at a couple.
This is one of the oldest references I could find of myself on the Internet to date. I used to use a free email service based in Vancouver called Freenet. They operated in a building on Dunsmir and I did give them a donation or two of money. Rise of the Dragon was also one of the games I had back on my Apple Macintosh LCIII. Yes I did own a Mac and I miss them a lot. Perhaps one day I’ll own another.
This reference when I found it was like: Whoa, was I lonely or something? Some people might find that alt.teens.penpals might be a bit creepy to be on but back then I guess I wanted to find some online people to chat with. Ah yes, I too was bullied or made fun of for using a computer a bit much so I guess I wanted to find new people to talk to.
I read a few more of the messages I left in the various newsgroups and to read them again is a bit weird. I don’t remember physically writing them but when I did read them I was like.. oh I remember that, why did I say it like that?
The cool thing is that down the road say in 20, 30 or even 40 years, I will still be able to find these thanks to Google’s massive storage capacity. Who knows perhaps I will be able to find other references of me on the Internet long lost too.
How long have you been playing around on the Internet, and what is the oldest reference you’ve been able to find on yourself?
Wow. I’ve been online since sometime in the 90’s, but the only thing pipl was able to find for my name and various email addresses was my blog. Searching by my main username found an older blog, but nothing newer than 2004.
Oh well!
I do not like that site one bit!!
Tyler Ingram January 22nd, 2009 at 15:42:18
Did you find some scary information about yourself Rosie?
Well…most of the results that it found for me are my comments on your site, haha.
Tyler Ingram January 23rd, 2009 at 06:01:56
lol that’s funny Cam, you need to hurry up and get your blog up n running
Didn’t find anything under my real name, that’s assuring. Found bunch stuff under my internet name though.
I’ve been around forever! Well at least since I was 10 years old or so
Haha.
Pipl didn’t find any of my older stuff though, shame
Maybe I’ll dig some of it up.
Nice find!
Thats pretty neat. I think that’s a pretty cool service.
Sort of like archive.org for yourself.
i celebrate four years at the Greeper in early April.
i should google all my different names and see.
did not mean to put my LINK as my name… sorry about that. have no idea where my head went. second time i’ve done that in a week. cept last time i left my EMAIL as my name. yeah smart, not an invite for spam or nothing.
Yeah, I’ve been writing a bit for the blog so that I at least have some content, but it is not an easy thing to do, that’s for sure!
Tyler Ingram January 28th, 2009 at 06:13:17
@JWRmedia – Guess with the archiving of us on the net we should be more careful what we post in case of future employment eh?
@Gus Aww well at least this time you didnt use your email address lol!
Wow, I put my name in and found some posts from almost 9 years ago. Thats insane!