Pipl

It's always being talked about somewhere, how people can find out so much information about people by looking at their internet activities and profiles. The most common sources are Myspace and Facebook. And most of this searching is done through Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

I know you've Googled yourself. Don't even pretend you haven't, dear reader.
Sometimes it yields good information about you (for instance, I once found myself mentioned in a blog by Jill Long Thompson when she was running for Governor). But often times, it doesn't.

But Pipl.com does.

This website runs a thorough search of people on the internet. It can search for people by name, email, username, phone, or business, and the results it finds are extensive. It shows people's addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, background reports, personal profiles, business links, public records, publications, photos, web pages, blog posts, documents, and gives quick facts about a person.

That's a lot of information. Pipl really does have a thorough search. More props to how well this search engine works: I have always been very hard to Google, because there is an author with my same name, and I have a very common name. But Pipl.com found me.


This is a ton of fun to play with, but actually, it's quite frightening. Pipl does such a good job searching, that hardly anything is left private. If Pipl gets too well-known, it could lead to another outbreak of identity theft. Or it could be used as a stalker resource.

Or it could be the tool that makes people more aware of internet security. It could increase people's security by making them more careful what they put online. And it really could be a great resource for employers to find out about potential employees.

Next time you feel the urge to Google yourself, Pipl yourself instead.
Find out just how much about you is available to everybody.