"I Know What You Tagged Last Summer"

Using the delicious site, as a class we each explored users that had tagged pages that pertained to similar interest of ours. I chose the page http://laws.adoption.com/ to bookmark. I found a delicious user who had also bookmarked the page. I found this user had bookmarked 27 pages relating to adoption. When I scrolled through the adoption tags, I found several pages bookmarked pertaining to private domestic and international adoption. I can infer from the sheer volume of these pages that the individual or someone close to her is looking to adopt a child. I found several tags that lead me to believe the user was a woman. These tags included Avon, candles, coupons, and gardening. By looking at her tags, I also gathered the woman was a Christian because she had several tags including the word Christian as well as bible and prayers. Furthermore, when I was looking through her adoption tags, I found several pages on Christian adoption agencies. She is very interested in politics. In fact she has tagged 47 pages pertaining to politics. I believe she is a Conservative Republican because nearly all of her pages relate. I also believe she is from Georgia. It was one of her more frequented tags and she had many pages about Georgia politics tagged. She is interested in genealogy and tagged a website called Famster. She specifically even tagged the page titled The Crosby’s. I think it would be viable to say she is related to the Crosby family somehow. I even watched a family reunion video which looked to be shot off the seawall in Galveston. Digging further into her adoption tags, I found a couple pages on The Archdioceses in Galveston. She has a lot of pages on photo editing as well.

I was surprised to find that you can discover so much about a person just by exploring the tags they have on their delicious page. Even very personal information is easily accessible to anyone who chooses to explore a page. This discovery only furthered the notion of a “digital footprint.” With the increasing use of social bookmarking sites like delicious, the spread of personal information is becoming even more extensive.