Data Search

Before looking at this information, I was pretty aware of the fact that search engines and social medias like Google, Facebook, and Apple Maps file information about its users such as our location and what we search/like. For some reason, whether it be my psychologically adolescent "gist-based" intuition or whatnot, but the fact that companies were doing this never really scared me that much. I've always had to promote myself online for recruiting aspects. uploading personal highlight videos and sending those to as many people as possible to get myself out there, but I never really realized until recently that even things like clicking a specific item while online could show up in an ad on Facebook or Instagram the next day.
As far as Google goes, the only things I found weren't surprising to me at all, and there actually wasn't as much information as I expected. I don't really feel violated in any way because if I am searching and uploading these things online, I shouldn't feel bad about them in the first place. Even though I clear my search history pretty often, there was still information about those things, but none that gave me concern.
Like I said above, the only things that I was surprised about was the online shipping thing. I knew that the stuff I liked on Facebook would be used to have things of similar nature pop up on my wall, but that's just how the algorithm works. I was surprised that things I was searching away from Facebook, like on different fashion sites were showing up in the ad section of Facebook.
Looking up the apple maps location history was actually pretty fun for me. It was cool to see all of the places I have been recently and recall some of those memories and pictures. I found that I didn't find it alarming more than I found it fun to proudly look through all of the cool places I've been able to travel to even in the past year.
I can see how this could be scary for someone to see who had no clue that site like these use our information, but to me it isn't. I have really nothing to hide, and if someone really wanted to find out where I lived or what I was liking without these data searches, it probably wouldn't be that hard anyways. I thought it was interesting to see what these data bases do have about me, but I am not concerned about it.