I have new neighbors who I don’t particularly care for. They’re the type of people who yell at each other constantly and thump around their house until all hours. Since they’ve moved in we’ve had the police in our quiet neighborhood a bunch of times. I’ve pinned my distaste of them on lack of sleep and peace.
Ever since they moved here from Florida I’ve sensed something was amiss. They arrived here with nothing but the shirts on their backs. First impressions of them were good and they both seemed interested in getting to work. My interest in them piqued when they leaked they were escaping their pasts.
One frustrated night, after hearing them argue at all hours of the night, I Googled their names and uncovered a handful of mugshots. Let’s see, within five minutes of searching I discovered they had both been arrested for assault in the states they previously lived. Later that night I found out their address and arrest history matched.
Over the past few months I’ve complained to the building’s owner and have gone as far as showing him their criminal history. One afternoon I took the time to illustrate how easy it was for me to find the information knowing only their first and last names. Verifying these people was a no brainer because their mugshots were the first pictures to populate my search results.
Unfortunately for those being searched, the internet doesn’t forget anything. For better or worse, everything we do has the potential to be searchable at anytime in the future. This article will eventually end up being searchable on the internet someday. If I write something disparaging it could potentially shine a bad light on me many years from now.
Almost everything we do publicly ends up on the internet. Public actions include running for an elected position as well as doing jail time. Basically, if you’re doing something that costs taxpayers money, whatever you’re doing will be made public and eventually online. From the time something becomes public, it takes search engines like Bing and Google a short time before they’re indexed.
A few years ago the only way to find out information on someone was to pay either an online or local private investigator service. Private investigators would use their connections with law enforcement or government agencies to get the lowdown on someone’s history. Discovering basic information was limited to the investigator’s ability to retrieve information.
Unearthing information today can be good and bad. Everyone has a history that may or may not follow them through life. Unfortunately for my new neighbors their history seems to follow them wherever they land. However, many people grow up and move away from their past allowing only those who search for them to unearth something that may not be current.
There are many more ways to research background information including social media sites. Although social media sites like Facebook may only offer limited information based on what a person is willing to share, it does offer some basic insight. Search engines don’t typically index pages from social media sites so it’s a good idea to scan the major sites along with search engines.
Had the landlord taken time to research his new tenants he would have found them to be less than savory. A basic search of their first and last names would have led him to either find new tenants or question them about their past. Had someone searched me, they would have found hundreds of these articles which may have changed how they feel.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can read past articles at www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)