found my old apartment, phone number and relatives online while preparing for a job interview
I had a pretty uncomfortable moment this week
I’m interviewing for a new role right now, so before one of the calls I searched my own name just to see what comes up publicly
mostly expected LinkedIn, maybe an old portfolio or dead social accounts
instead the first page was full of websites with way more information than I expected
old cell numbers
addresses from years ago
possible relatives
even one site showing people I “may know” for some reason
What made it worse is that some of the info wasn’t even accurate anymore, but it still looked convincing enough that someone could easily assume it was current
I spent a while trying to remove a few listings manually and quickly realized how fragmented the whole thing is
every site has different rules, different forms, different waiting periods
Finally I found that there're services that can remove these pages, I'm thinking of trying Onerep.
Still feels strange that random background-info websites are often easier to find than the things you intentionally put online yourself
Do you guys actually monitor this stuff regularly or only check after something weird happens?