Lately, I have had a lot of experiences which have reminded me of the transparent nature of the Internet, and how finding information has become amazingly easy.

A friend of mine was very surprised when he found a picture of himself, in the third grade, by doing a vanity search on Google.

What's a vanity search? Simply go to Google and type in your name.

Now if you really want to get creative, go to Google and in your vanity searching, type in your name, your city and state, and/or something else personal to you. Examples of things you can type in:

Your name + Your employer
Your name + A Pet's name
Your name + Names of schools (high school, college, middle school, elementary)
Your name + name of someone you know well
Your name + city where you used to live
Your name + any organization you have ever belonged to

Just your phone number
Just your address
Just your email address

Get creative. See what your vanity search reveals about you.

Today, a woman was talking with me about how she might build a business on the Internet. I don't do coaching for how to start your own business online, though I have a good friend who does. (I'll post a link here later for anyone who's interested...)

When I suggested that she start building a business around something that she found interesting or really was passionate about, she asked how to do that without spending money. I suggested that as a first step, she could simply start a blog or a squidoo site, and start talking about the issue that she wanted to build a business around.

"But wouldn't people know it was me?"

The question puzzled me, so I asked her a little further about it.

"Well, I just wouldn't want to be so out there."

I kind of cut the conversation short at that point, because this was a bigger can of worms than I wanted to open in the few minutes I was going to be there with her.

But given more time, here's what I probably should have said:

"I'm sorry, but you're already out there."

Do a quick vanity search on yourself and see what comes up. You might just be surprised who has said what about you, or what documents your name appears on.

About a month ago, I did a vanity search on behalf of someone I knowwho works for the state of Wyoming. We did a vanity search on Google for the search term: "her name" + "state of Wyoming". The search turned up a PDF memo which was supposed to be a confidential communication between herself and a superior. It was the #2 result on Google.

Do a vanity search on yourself.

The guy in the video below (YouTube) "found" himself when the girl he was supposed to ask to marry him contacted him. It's not the greatest piece of documentary work or anything remotely resembling a documentary, but it is framed in a funny way, and hopefully watching it may make you a little more aware that your information is already irretrievably, irrevocably "out there".

One of the comments to this video on YouTube was: "[This] happened to me when i was gone for a month and I almost got arrested."

So, if I haven't driven the point home yet, just for your own knowledge, go do a vanity search on yourself.

Remember, this is all information that thieves already know how to access. There is no 100% effective way for you to contain all of it, but you should know what's out there, and what's going on with your information, your pictures, and your communication with others.

Well, the Google thing still isn't producing many results for me, but the ZabaSearch is just plain freaky. I actually ran a "paid" report using PeopleFinders and that one was pretty thorough as well, but the free one is just so much - and correct!