How does the Internet see you?

Yeah, there's one guy who snags all the exact matches for my name, and another flaming jackass politician who shows up all over the damn place because of a partial match. My basic internet footprint is remarkably small given the degree to which my life revolves around the internet, and that's partially intentional and partially accidental.

From a data mining perspective, however, I'd be an open book if you were looking in the right places. Things like this stupid app tend to give people a false sense of security in their personal information ("Oh, it didn't find stuff that actually matched me, I'm cool"). Meanwhile, corporations are buying and selling information about what you like, what you buy, where you go online, and who you are all the damn time. This isn't quite as nefarious as it sounds though --doesn't involve your name or other unique identifiers as much as one might think, and is often in the aggregate-- but it's still important to remember that all that information about you is floating around out there and it's good to be aware of what you're doing online and how your data is being collected and used (in other words, read privacy policies, especially if you're submitting personally identifiable information).

The internet doesn't give a shit about me. The internet can barely be bothered to see me at all. The internet isn't even really looking, so much as having me thrown at it. Other people are looking, though, and it's how they see me that matters.