I’m genuinely curious. I feel like when I meet new people—especially if I want to be friends—I’ll often look them up online. I’ll look at their socials etc. There’s a bit of internet stalker in most people (i think?)
I never thought this was weird, BUT recently, a coworker has been doing this to me and it feels…creepy? First, he found a very, very old thing I self-published (over a decade ago)
that is pretty difficult to find; it’s searchable, but would just take some deep googling as my name isn’t tied to it directly. I found out because I walked into work one day, and he was showing it to all of our coworkers. It’s nothing bad, I was just taken a back and surprised.
Yesterday, I was talking to a different coworker about a trip. And they said “Oh I know, didn’t you do X? PERSON showed me pics from your instagram” He’s done other stuff like this, where he will find something about me online, and then share it with the others, often before talking to me about it.
I’m trying to pin down why this feels weird.
Because he’s not doing anything wrong or that I haven’t done. I think it’s just that he is showing other people before talking to me? He and I did not talk at all about my trip before he showed my other coworkers insta photos.
Comments
Nopeeeee that’s creepy
Googling the people you know is normal. Telling someone what you found when you googled them is diabolical.
Eh I don’t know why but this is also giving me the ick
ETA I do a lot of internet stalking but I don’t go back that far unless it’s someone I’m interested in dating or even becoming close friends with
I do a full social engineering investigation 🤷🏻♀️ if their information is public I already know about it. Dont care how creepy this is, my safety is the most important thing
Often. That’s how I found out that my sister’s bf has a DV conviction and served time.
I feel like it really depends on the situation/context of how I plan on interacting with that person. For instance, I just had to do a training seminar and I looked up the trainer on linkedin and FB just to see their credentials/schooling but that’s it. For someone I was interested in dating, I’d definitely be searching around to see if they had a criminal history or sketchy online presence. For acquaintance type people I usually dont search for anything at all, unless I have a specific reason to (ie I want to send them an invite via FB or something)
Do you work in corporate? I’m thinking this could be taken to HR. He’s publicly breaching your privacy. It’s not ’nothing bad’. It’s bad behavior.
I think it’s the part where he’s showing or telling other people about this stuff without you telling him about it first that feels the weirdest. Him talking about you so much to other people without even interacting with you is…odd and it’s hard to trust what that person’s motives are.
But you also don’t have to pin point exactly what feels off to know that it’s making you uncomfortable!
You can request Google to remove your information from their search results. I regularly search my name, address, and phone number to see what comes up and request Google to remove all results that come up. I also would go to the actual pages and request them to remove my info, but that’s not always successful. Now I pay a company to scour the internet for my personal information and they have it all removed. They’ll send me a monthly report of what they found and had removed.
The shit you need to do when being stalked is super fun.
Edit to add: the company is Ironwall 360. My workplace offered it to us for free after a huge data breach, but it costs about $200 a year for personal use.
It depends on the person. If it’s someone I’m interested in dating, I do a deep investigation lol especially to check if they’re in a relationship or not. If it’s someone I just met and befriended, then I wouldn’t do any investigation.
But I would NEVERRRR tell them what I found out about them if I’m not following them online, omg.
Oh, I do this all the time. What I DON’T do is I don’t tell the person I’m creeping on all the shit I found out. That is weird.
My friend recently gave me access to his Facebook so I could use marketplace (I bought a new home and need furniture). I do not have Instagram, snap chat, tik tok, etc. As soon as I had access to look people up, I did. I don’t like the feeling, I think it’s unhealthy, and one of the reasons I stopped social media. Why bother? 10-20 years ago (I’m almost 40), when people left your life that was it. I don’t like the access, both ways.
Block him
I absolutely do this. When I was a hiring manager it was an incredible tool. I know that people have differences, but what you’re putting out there to represent you says a lot.
My biggest fear is letting out that I know something that I wouldn’t know without having creeped. So no, I don’t generally talk about my findings with people.
I feel like it’s somewhat normal to be curious and creep but to then gossip about it isn’t cool.
I do it all the time, mostly for work related purposes! My profession forms a small community and in my job I get to interact with a lot of my colleagues, some of who I only know by name, so I tend to google them or ask my work friends to know a bit beforehand. Maybe I’m a creeper lol I think it’s quite normal 🫣
I only really do this if I’m getting to know someone on a deeper level like for dating beyond the first few dates/starting to get more serious, or when I’ve been looking for roommates back when I had them and I wanted to make sure there weren’t any heinous red flags that were sticking out like a prior eviction notice.
I was once doxxed years ago by a fairly unhinged person and have since cleaned up my own internet presence, and I also feel like it’s part of everyone’s internet safety to monitor their own online presence – not to mislead others, but if there’s something out there you’d rather not connect back to yourself, it’s just good practice to clean it up so it doesn’t take you by surprise if someone finds it (but also don’t be surprised if someone DOES find it, some folks are very good at this shit)
i don’t really, i guess i just don’t care enough lol but i don’t think it’s weird! my husband definitely does this, it’s just a bit of reconnaissance nothing crazy
Never, and there isn’t much about me online either. I find it a bit creepy.
I do it all the time. No shame. Haha. But it’s not to be mean. It’s usually to be like I wonder what happened to… or if I think someone looks like them, I’ll find them to show my husband etc. Ive looked up my exes before but that’s just to see what happening now. It’s not wish bad on them or hoping they’re doing shit. It’s just to see what they’re up to these days.
Yes I look people up but the situation you described with your coworker is creepy af
It is not remotely creepy to google someone in this day and age as part of sussing them out for whatever reason.
Where it gets weird is if they tell other people about stuff they found if there’s no reason for the other party to be interested, or if there’s context that matters.
I say this as someone who if you google my name and city plus either my main hobby or certain “SJW” keywords you will get a fair number of hits about my IRL activities – but no photos. This is because I am a conventionally unattractive woman, and the sad fact is that if people see my picture before they get to know me as a person they tend to be pre-emptively negatively biased in a way that is frankly unfair to me, because that’s how people’s brains work.
So people who are researching me for whatever reason go “hmmm very suss she doesn’t have any pictures online” but if they do the courteous thing and reach out and ask I explain why and everything’s cool.
It’s not that fact that he googled you once that’s fairly normal. It’s that he’s obviously searched you more than once and is sharing these things in a professional setting that’s creepy. Like I think it’s fairly normal to like sit on the sofa with your bff and google someone you met. It’s not normal to share that stuff with coworkers.
Oh I do it all the time, I have no devious plans for the info I find, I’m just curious I suppose.
But it’s also one of the reasons I try to have as low an online profile as possible; I’d love to be completely unsearchable so nosy bitches like me can’t find anything >.>
Yes I do it; then I am like wth but then I think well I follow many people on FB. So honestly what’s the difference? I think social media in a way makes us like a stalker in a way. Just saying. lol
I look up all men I actively start dating. If I cannot find them anywhere, not even professionally, I ask them why.
The one case I was super surprised was, when the guy turned out to be a very high ranking Police boss. I understand, that he kept that for the first in person date. And when I looked further into it, there actually was some super hard to find professional article from like 10 years ago. He was very low profile for safety reasons.
Yeah unless this guy is your hype man or PR guy it reads as someone unfamiliar with social cues and what type of things would make someone uncomfortable. Like, why is researching you the way he spends his free time? I think if you’re gonna creep people online (and yes, it is creepy. I do it on occasion and it is indeed a creepy thing to do), you should at least have the shame and good sense to keep it to yourself.
You are encountering situations where you learn there are conversations being started about you behind your back… about things this coworker has dug up from your social media past. 😳
Yeah, that’s giving obsessed stalker vibes at worst. Socially awkward fawning vibes at best. The truth is probably (hopefully) somewhere in the middle. Whatever the case – it’s unusual and off-putting.
Does this guy do it to other people too, or just you? As it sounds like it’s approaching cyber stalking level and is very creepy. Searching someone’s name is one thing, but this sounds like much more than that. Especially him discussing everything he is finding with everyone else. It would make me deeply uncomfortable.
I creep on my old acquaintances from work and college. The ones whose names I can remember. It’s weird when an obituary comes up. I would never look up new acquaintances though unless there was some reason.
His behaviour is definitely in the creepy territory, that’s why it feels bad. I once had a colleague who would occasionally send me emails at 1am saying things like “Are you (such and such ethnicity) because you look like you are.” In one of the emails he did this super weird cringe thing where he re-wrote his email signature to ask me on a date. I hated knowing he was looking me up online at 1am after working with him during the day, it made me feel violated. He was unattractive and didn’t smell good, but even if he had been attractive it would have given me psychopath stalker vibes. Trust your gut.
All the time and no. 😂
Creepy af. I google men I date and that’s about it. I google them, see if they’re who they say they are with no major priors and that’s all I need.
I do for my safety, full stop.
I do occasionally for people I’ve lost touch with but what your coworker is doing is crossing a line. Does he do that to other people, too, or just you?
It’s one of those things we do but don’t talk about. It’s one thing to say “I love what you posted about XYZ” when it’s a fairly public/accessible thing to find. It’s another to share that around or be like “how do you like living on Example Avenue?”
What’s missing is the distinction between stuff they WANT to have out there for all to see and what else JUST HAPPENS to be out there as a result of living their life, and having the tact to be chill about what you found and social IQ to adjust to their comfort level.
I view it as helping me seed my bank of topics to hit/avoid and prep my own knowledge a bit to ask better questions when engaging with the person. It’s all about having more context to understand them better.
Yep what he did was weird. For the record, I don’t think it’s weird to look people up online and look at publically available information. Personally, I only do it to crushes if I’m not sure they are married/partnered and want to find out.
But what he did is creepy because he did a serious deep dive to find such buried info, unless he accidently happened upon it (I remember years ago I was googling a crush and happened to somehow find his posts on a chronic illness online community forum and felt really bad for him and also like I super intruded on his privacy, but I was an accident that I even found this info). Even if he happened upon it, the fact that he’s showing people what he found is super weird. Like why do that? It makes him look crazy for real. And like he doesn’t realize that? That doesn’t say good things about his social skills. It also.tells.me that he’s kinda fixated on you, maybe not in a good way.
What the coworker is doing IS creepy and violating. But if my teens are hanging with a new crowd or dating someone new, I 100% do a search on socials. AFTER I’ve become friends with someone I might do a social search to see what else we have in common. But digging deep on a coworker and printing stuff to share with other coworkers? That’s weird. Confront.
I would ask if he’s searching for information on everyone or just you when coworkers are present. His reaction in front of others would be telling. And of course, the others might see how creepy it is if it is just focused on you.
Given the rate of violence men commit
against others, I don’t feel a shred of guilt
googling them.
Never. I have no socials and have gone through all the “people” search sites to have my name and number removed. Privacy is key.
absolutely never. I feel like this is the less common answer but I just like don’t think to do it or do I care. I have some friends who are absolutely obsessive about Internet stalking people. When I was single and dating, I never thought to Google or look anyone up, but my girlfriends insisted on doing it for me lol. What happened to having a little mystery in life?! so that’s my personal opinion. but I do fully expect that everyone else is googling or looking me up, have at it. I think in today’s world you just kinda have to expect people are more digitally connected than they are in real life. I wouldn’t read too much into it actually.
I don’t internet sleuth normally. I looked up my husband before our first date just to make sure he had nothing crazy with prior convictions or something.
Other than that, I’ve never even thought to look up acquaintances and I would certainly never share what I found with mutuals.
That sounds like something someone with ill intent would do.
You feel uncomfortable because what he’s doing is weird and invasive. The fact that he’s telling others shows he thinks it’s fine to do this.
I think you should take steps to keep yourself safe. I personally would let HR know and ask them to intervene but do what is safe for yourself.
I do a deeper dive on most people than the FBI. I just don’t tell them about it like that guy lmao
The attitudes about this sort of thing really puzzle me. People will post or comment under their own name in a public space and if you see it, and comment on it, you’re being creepy and are stalking.
Now, if someone goes to all the trouble and sleuthing to find out who “aethocist” is and comments about some of my creepier comments I might get upset, a little.
This is not a direct response to OP, who I see has received many thoughtful responses. It’s more of a cautionary tale about googling people. I used to Google/social media search people that I dated. I definitely took it too far, although I never told them. And it definitely was tied to trying to understand and create a fuller picture about who someone is based on their social media–I have since realized this can be a pretty bad idea.
One time I was looking at the IG of a guy with whom I had been on a couple dates. I was way down in his posts and accidentally liked one of his posts. It was mortifying. The guy did not want to go out again afterwards (understandably). I don’t think see it as a great loss after so little time dating him, but I started to think about why and how much I was googling people thereafter. If you don’t know the answer (I see that many of you have legitimate reasons for doing this, so I’m not talking to you), it’s definitely worth inquiring about.
I (30s F) had this happen with a younger coworker who was trying to use my old social media to mock me with other coworkers and embelish or alter things I’ve posted to make me look bad to others. It’s super creepy and invasive, and I’d hear lies and exaggerated truths about my own life second-hand from other coworkers. She was eventually fired due to being an all-around jerk and for stalking me, thankfully.
There’s a difference between casually scrolling a profile in an interested / positive way and using people’s history as a conversation piece at work.
I look up people all the time. Mainly just their socials and at that point I either add them or move on. I wouldn’t dare tell them that I’ve looked them up or talk about something obscure that I’ve found about them. That’s tending down the obsessive route.
Are you friendly with this coworker? Is he connected with you on socials? In any case, what he is doing is entirely inappropriate.
I look up two of my exes about once a year. They are dangerous men, and I felt much safer knowing one of them moved out of state.
I sometimes look up my husband’s ex wife. I’ve blocked her on socials because she was alternating between harassing me and pretending to be my friend. She wrote and published an article about my husband that mentioned me, and was very hostile, so I check for her sequel sometimes.
Interesting thread.
I’m an elder millennial and the “googling people” after meeting them never resonated. I think it comes down to our personalities and the way that we see the world.
For example, I am someone that likes puzzles and complexities. I find the process of connecting and getting to know new people stimulating and exciting. I would be less inclined to get to know someone if they immediately share all the things that make them who they are in one setting. It feels subtly manipulative like a person trying to get ahead of you forming your own opinion of them by narrating their practiced story to depict the image they want to portray.
So for me it feels like googling new connections to determine who they are and what they’re like is equivalent to getting stuck with that person that needs you to know all of their achievements, peeves, experiences, etc., from the jump.
Most of what is shared online is carefully curated by our egos and doesn’t do justice to our uniquity and humanity. I find that googling people leaves me sorely disappointed and tends to paint an inauthentic picture of a person. We all have our biases and schemas that we subconsciously reference and use to analyze our social experiences. It is impossible to not form some sort of opinion after reading data about an individual and oftentimes these assumptions and interpretations are way off course, causing us to miss out on opportunities of authentic connection because we simply judged.
Moreover, if a person’s online presence doesn’t make us reject the individual it can be even more damaging to fall for the pretty painted picturesque representation they’ve eloquently designed online. I’ve seen many a person fall into toxic relationships because the one that caught their eye had a great resume on Google, but what does that actually amount to? You cannot know a person’s intricacies, values, insecurities, and beautiful quirks by stalking their social media. You will only see what they want you to see, and that’s not real.
I hope this doesn’t sound judgy I have nothing against those that Google when they network. I also do understand that there’s a sense of safety in checking somebody’s references especially for romantic interests. I don’t negate that at all and like I said I believe that this habit of googling a person comes down to our personalities and the ways that we interact with the world. My mother, amazing woman yet weary of the world and a bit skeptical feels safer meeting new acquaintances after doing her cyber homework on them. For me if I were to Google somebody I’m about to meet up with for the first time I probably wouldn’t end up going for lack of mystery and excitement and I’m sure subconscious judgements I’ve made based on their content.
P.s. I am an extrovert, empath, and hsp. The concept of people developing a brand to represent themselves repulses me. Some people are more comfortable interacting with others on a superficial level that doesn’t require vulnerability. You see it all over Hollywood, strategic alliances that lack connection and chemistry, yet american society today encourages these combinations of people like you’re putting together ingredients for a tasty sandwich. How many celebrity couples have delayed announcing their breakup or divorce in order to maintain their fan base that would dwindle if they no longer showed up as a power couple or whatever.
Finally, this is such a spectrum I don’t mean that there are two categories of people those that Google others and seek out self-serving relationships of convenience and then those of us that are so authentic we dismiss online personas. No not at all, I get what you’re saying, and to answer your question more specifically I think I too would feel a bit creeped out if a coworker surprised me with their familiarity of my life, however, I would reflect on what my response might look like if this was coming from someone I’m attracted to. Would that make it uncreepy and instead flattering? For me yes it would which tells me that coworker, probably not creepy even though it’s not the attention I wanted from this person; kind of like when I am walking down the street and the cat calls are coming and it’s repulsive, until the person with the gorgeous face makes eye contact and smiles and all of a sudden it doesn’t feel like unwanted advances…
Hope that makes sense.
I used to “Facebook-stalk” a lot of people when I was in my 20’s, but that behavior has decreased a lot since entering my 30’s. It helps that most of my millennial-age peers have really slowed down on social media.
I don’t really care what people do, who they’re married to or what they have anymore. I have too many problems and responsibilities of my own to be concerned about that. Better to judge people on your real-life interactions and leave the rest behind.
I have a distinctive name and if you Google me, you might think that I was involved in some kind of contentious lawsuit. The truth is that I have a family member with paranoid personality disorder and a decades-long habit of filing legal paperwork over every and any little thing that he becomes involved in: parking tickets, doctor’s visits, car repairs, etc, etc. Over the past few years, he’s named me in half a dozen of his complaints. His behavior is so out of control that I had to place him on a “vexatious litigant” list because I was tired of paying legal fees to cover the frivolous lawsuits and never-ending ex-parte applications.
So yeah…if you look me up online, you’ll probably see a lot of drama related to that, which isn’t exactly a fair depiction of my life. Sometimes I really wish I had a non-distinctive name. Ha!
I think I’ve done this twice since high school and I’m in my mid 30s. I’d rather just learn about who people are through personal experience and I’m not on a lot of social media platforms.
I don’t know if anyone remembers back in the aughts and early 2010s when those gossip sites for regular people were a thing? Like places you could submit “dirt” on people, celebrity style but for normies? I can’t remember the names of most of them except for the one someone submitted me to (which is why I won’t share the name, fuck that site).
But anyways, many many years ago someone wrote some trash about me and submitted it to one of these websites and included my full legal name and photo. It’s a colorful and trashy article about what a slut I am, basically. It was really embarrassing and I’ve always wondered, especially then, if it could affect me negatively somehow. It used to be one of the top 5 hits on my name in a Google search. I was never able to get it taken down.
These days, it’s super hard to find it, even googling my full name. You’ll get my LinkedIn in, some random videos of me doing things for work, and then a ton of results of people with similar last names. You really have to go pages into the Google search for it. Sometimes I can’t find it at all, sometimes I can.
Anyways, a couple years ago, I made a new friend through work. They decided over lunch to tell me “I googled you and found this funny thing about you on this website.” It had been 10 years since that stupid thing was posted but it was sooooo uncomfy. It made me kind of not want to be friends but they profusely apologized when they saw how uncomfortable I was.
Man. The comments in this post reaffirm why I periodically Google my name and delete stuff from the results. My Facebook is on lockdown too. You can find me but almost every single thing is private.
I don’t even have anything to hide. I just think it’s weird that people would try to find out information about me instead of just having a real life conversation with me.
I’m glad I’m not dating, because apparently it’s a red flag to not be searchable these days which sounds crazy to me. Not everyone cares about social media.
Do you, boo. I agree that what we put out there is public for the world to see. So I don’t think you guys are doing anything wrong by searching up people. It’s just not the way I think.
I think a lot of us look people up online, but have the sense to keep it to ourselves
What this person is doing is really inappropriate, and it’s baffling that no one else at work is finding his behavior strange
Edit – OP, do your coworkers know that he is sharing information from Googling you? Or is he implying that you talked to him about these topics? Because if your coworkers know that he is pulling this information from Google, THAT is fucking weird and I would question your work culture.
Other than Linkedin, I don’t. It rarely occurs to me.
I feel like many people look up their potential dates and stuff… But might also be creeped out that their date is doing the same? And I don’t think I would show it to people. Gotta keep my creeping secret 😂💀
This is a stalker who is very bad about keeping it to himself.
Not anymore tbh. I used to do it before but now I sort of don’t really care enough I guess? If I dated maybe I would.
I don’t think looking up someone online with their public information is stalkerish. I think calling their work place on LinkedIn to make sure they actually work there is.
I look up EVERYONE. Drs, kids teachers, neighbors, friends, friends of friends, people I see stories about on the news. If I’ve met you or heard of you, I’ve probably searched you on socials.
I tell no one 🙃
I look up people all the time and I try to learn more about them. I will never use that what I dug up in a conversation unless they share the stuff with me first.
However, if I find that a person I met recently has a violent criminal record in the past (mostly through old news story in Google) especially about SA and crimes against children, I’m hundred percent using that info to stay away from them.