I think upon inspection you would find that those most worried about privacy and the peering eye of big brother, are the same people who would be the most upset to find out that no one actually cares.

So here’s what started my story…

Yesterday my wife received a call from a young woman looking for “Matt” from an unfamiliar number. When she was told that Matt was not there, she seemed disappointed.

Well, I had no idea who might be calling me at 8:30 on a Thursday morning, and my curiosity was peaked. We had the phone number, so I could have called back and found out what was up, but instead I took the following route and was quite surprised at what I was able to find.

1. Reverse lookup: I wasn’t able to find the name of the caller, but I did find out that she called from a cellphone, and I was able to determine her mobile carrier.
2. *67 Callback: blocks your number when calling the person, just in case I didn’t want the person to know it was me calling back. This low tech approach got me to the voice mail which gave me a first name of the caller.
3. Google.com: This is where it gets interesting. I had a phone number and a first name. Ok, lets put both into trusty Google.
   Result: I found a university housing page listing the number I searched for and full name of the person, and street address. Now I’m curious as to what more is out there.
4. University Site: Ok, search the name.
   Result: Well, now I know what program she is in, and look here, and athlete too, with a link to a player profile. A wealth of information here: Home town, birth date, current university year, picture. Enough? One last step…
5. Facebook: person search, yes that’s her…I know from the picture from the last search. While I don’t have access to her profile, I can see her friends names, and based on the surnames, the names of a number of her family members.

Now, I want to stress here that I am not a strange internet stalker, but from the phonecall my curiosity was peaked, and then through the process of the search I was really intrigued, not so much about the person, but at the shocking amount of info I could find given a few minutes.

Info summary:

• First Name, Surname
• Age
• Date of birth
• Address
• School
• Cell provider
• Univeristy program
• Athletic history and activities
• Home town
• Friends names
• Family members
• Picture

All from…a phone number on a call display, and commonly available, legal, internet searches. No hacking or subversive methods involved. It took about 5-10 minutes. Think about it. How much do people know about you?

And in case you were wondering…no, I don’t know the person.
It must have been a wrong number.