How to Track Your Digital Footprint with iGoogle Widgets
With privacy concerns and online reputation concerns at the forefront of the Internet world, it's good to have a way to keep an eye on what is on the Internet about you.
- Difficulty:
- Easy
Instructions
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1
If you don't already have a Google account, go to Google and set one up (see link below).
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To customize your own Google home page, go to the iGoogle page at google.com/ig (see link below). When you are logged in to your Google account, your customized home page will be at that URL.
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Find the link on the upper right that says "Add Stuff." You will find hundreds of widgets that you can use to make your iGoogle home page customized just for you.
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To check on your online reputation, your online information, or to see what information is available about you online, choose one of the customized search widgets.
The one illustrated at the opening of this article is a Blog Search widget. It will search through blogs for any mention of your name, your web site name, your URL, or any other search that you think would be relevant.
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You can add more than one widget to your page. There are widgets for custom web searches, image searches, even very specialized searches such as eBay.
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Each time you open your iGoogle home page, you can see the latest search results displayed in your search widgets. This way you can track the information available about you on the Internet.
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Resources
Comments
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ooboo
Jan 07, 2009
The irony here is that the igoogle service is itself a major privacy concern. All of the widgets you select and all of the searches you perform are collected by google to create a detailed profile of what you read, where you live and what you search for. Google's policies do not say what they will or will not do with this profile specifically, this includes selling it, giving it to government agencies or simply archiving everything you do forever. So, saying it's a good idea to track your online identity for privacy reasons using a privacy invading tool like igoogle, shows that the author is not much of an authority in the area of online privacy. -
ooboo
Jan 07, 2009
The irony here is that the igoogle service is itself a major privacy concern. All of the widgets you select and all of the searches you perform are collected by google to create a detailed profile of what you read, where you live and what you search for. Google's policies do not say what they will or will not do with this profile specifically, this includes selling it, giving it to government agencies or simply archiving everything you do forever. So, saying it's a good idea to track your online identity for privacy reasons using a privacy invading tool like igoogle, shows that the author is not much of an authority in the area of online privacy.
