<p>For professional sleuthing, you have to know how to figure out what is good info and what is not. Trip advisor has been very successful because they do some verifications and they do not let people post garbage on their site. CC is pretty good because they keep it clean and people figure out pretty quickly which poster is more credible. Ebay is a great example of using community’s feedback to keep merchants honest. I am at a point that I will not buy anything without reading the product feedback, and I have found 90% of them to be accurate.</p>
<p>This Valentine’s day, I ordered flowers from one well known internet company. The flowers didn’t show up. I went on their twitter acct, all the chatters were very angry. I went to another internet company’s twitter acct, it was full of praises from thankful customers. It is going to be hard for the first one to recover. I don’t think their earnings will be that great for the next few quarters.</p>
<p>Internet information is going to be part of our personal and business lives. Anyone who wants to hold on to the believe that it is useless is not getting on with the program.</p>
<p>This is an interesting discussion, as I spend a fair amount of time on the internet ferreting things out. I can remain virtuous on this topic because I’m not on facebook and my kids aren’t actually dating right now, but I think it’s interesting that some people are upset about parents googling the families of their kids’ SOs. I have little interest in googling anyone my kids might date casually, but once it gets serious, you can be sure that I would want to know about my future grandchildren’s other grandparents. In the old days, you knew or knew of the family your kid was marrying into; nowadays, not so much. Obviously, if I should happen to know the family personally, I wouldn’t feel the need to google! And this wouldn’t be for the purposes of warning my kids so much as making sure I don’t put my foot in it, politically, religiously, or any number of other ways.</p>
<p>Sseamom, I too have a completely different relationship with my kids than you seem too. And we ALL love our lives this way! We wouldn’t change the closeness that we have. We are all into each others personal lives. We share pretty openly and celebrate together and also comfort each other. It’s just great! I am happy for you that you have found a level of involvement and closeness that works for you and yours! My kids expect me to behave the way I do. If I did anything else at this point, they would think I was mad at them or something! Because this is the dynamic we’ve chosen, they would view it as detached, disinterested, uncaring and cold. It would actually leave them feeling like they had lost something…or someone! Lol. Different strokes for different folks!</p>
<p>I’m thinking about how easy it is to look up court records on line. Those records were always publicly available, but used to require a trip to the courthouse and a written request for the information. Now you can simply go to state Judiciary Case Records websites, plug in a name and up pops every traffic ticket, divorce proceeding, foreclosure, citation, bankruptcy proceeding, and criminal charge.</p>
<p>Would you conduct the same kind of research on your adult child’s dates and friends if you had to physically go to the courthouse to do a records search, or physically go to a library to search newpaper articles and notices using a microfiche? </p>
<p>I’m just curious if the research about friends and dates of adult children is because the technology makes it so easy, or if you would do the same research if it was more difficult? I’m not pointing fingers, and I’m not asking this of anyone in particular, I’m just curious. </p>
<p>I tend to think that the anonymous nature of online research makes it easy to cross boundaries that we wouldn’t cross if we had to show our faces and submit our names and take time out of our lives to request that same information. But maybe I’m wrong about that.</p>
<p>"Would you conduct the same kind of research on your adult child’s dates and friends if you had to physically go to the courthouse to do a records search, or physically go to a library to search newpaper articles and notices using a microfiche? "</p>
<p>eastcoast- of course the ease of the search makes it more likely to check things. I am not sure finding information that is publically available is crossing boundries. To me information on the Internet is like reading it in the newspaper or hearing it on TV or radio.</p>
<p>It’s not the “showing my face” part that is daunting. I would probably only go to the courthouse to research someone if I had met them, and had serious concerns about them. Or if some piece of information had come to me that caused me to be concerned. For the 34 yr. old dating my 19 year old daughter, yes, if that had continued and I had not had online records searching and Google available to me, eventually I would have had a background check done on him.</p>
<p>That is absolutely not necessarily true. On more than one occasion, I have been asked to pose for pictures. I don’t like doing that, and consented only after saying “but please do not put these on the internet.” I DO NOT want my photo put online unless I have explicitly decided to do so-I don’t like facebook particularly, and anyway, I don’t feel I should have to justify the request. On several of those occasions, my photo was put on their facebook (and then showed up on mine as a tagged photo with all the accompanying comments). I was livid, as I had expressly requested that they not do that, and my request was blatantly disregarded even as the photographer promised it was only for her private collection. The last time this friend tried to gather me for a group photo, I declined and told her why.</p>
<p>I would not assume that just because a photo is on the internet, it was taken and posted with the subject’s permission.</p>
<p>As to Facebook, I do understand why people like it. I got one originally when my Ds were in school to monitor their online activity in order to help them learn about appropriate use. I rarely check mine and never post on it. What I don’t get is the amount of information people are willing to post about themselves online. Privacy and boundaries are just non-existent for some people. NOT for me.</p>
<p>“Don’t believe everything you read” has been just as true now (if not more) than before the internet came into being. Please do not assume that anything you find on the internet is “accurate.” Some of the biggest lies are spread on the internet, in addition to general misinformation spread by individuals, knowingly or otherwise. Even here on CC, you can find posts full of misinformation with regard to medical issues written by intelligent and well meaning but completely unqualified individuals.</p>
<p>My mom feels the same way. We kids have to be careful and ASK her and respect her wishes. Usually if it’s a WHOLE FAMILY kind of portrait picture she doesn’t mind. If it’s a candid shot focused on her, she doesn’t want it on the internet.</p>
<p>We all understand it and respect her wishes. She DOES, however, thoroughly enjoy creeping on all of our pages, and her grandchildren too, and their friends. So does my 94 year old grandmother! LOL. She knows more about everyone in the family, what’s going on in their lives, who’s dating who, etc. than anyone else does! Wanna know anything about anyone? Just ask grandma!!! LOL</p>
<p>I’m curious about the “in the old days.” Must people here probably did not marry a person from their (small) hometown. At least, as I think back, the larger number of people here talk about meeting their future spouses while away at college, or later at work, or in other ways out in the larger world.</p>
<p>How did parents in those “old days” get the scoop? Or did they trust you to figure it out on their own?</p>
<p>I’m sure there are a few here whose parents could use that method of asking around town, but i’ll bet that is a minority. Those old days are, for many if not most of us, generations ago.</p>
<p>Yet, absent the proper parental background check, we soldiered through our relationships all on our own.</p>
<p>When we didn’t have phones we used to be able to drop in at friends’ house without a lot of prior notice. When we didn’t have cars, we used to walk every where and our circle of friends were closer. One may say that life was less complicated or better. But with those new inventions, we gained a lot more conveniences, but also a lot more problems. I kind of view googling someone on the internet as the same thing. I think it is easier for people to “invent themselves” because of the internet now, so if I don’t use it to guard against that then I am at a disadvantage. </p>
<p>I don’t know if any of us are saying that we would tell people everything we could find on the internet. Everyone has their own benchmark, for me, if I were find out my kid’s SO is a married man or has a criminal record then I would definitely say something.</p>
<p>All I know is that in our small town of 10,000 I share my name with another (not-so-wonderful) woman. I discovered this a few years back when I received several calls from her bill collectors. I just hope to God that she cleans up her act or that a potential inlaw doesnt takes it upon herself to judge my D by a strangers bad behavior. But if that’s the case, as the Italians say “meno male”. She would not only loose a fiance but a bad MIL as well.</p>
<p>musica, same with my dad. Even same middle name though they spell it differently. We’ve been getting collectors calls for quite a few years. No matter how many times we explain it, no use.</p>
<p>I think that’s why this whole thing bugs me. How do you KNOW that who you’re googling is actually the same person? Even with my bf’s uncommon last name, I still have to go through a few Google pages to find him. Someone at our same college even came up with his name that isn’t him. </p>
<p>What if you find something “bad” around the wrong Joe or Jane Jones? Then what? You’ll have this preconceived idea of who they are based on someone who isn’t even them.</p>
<p>I did google D2’s new boyfriend. As mentioned above, there are others with his same rather uncommon name, one is an attorney is San Francisco. Others I ruled out by their home town and states. </p>
<p>I got the same 4 hits over and over:he played baseball for his high school and was on some sort of recruiting track, he was quarterback of his relatively small high school’s football team, he made the honor roll, and he has a private Facebook page. Really not much to be found. If I was looking for a “scoop” I would have been disappointed. My reason for googling him was I was “trapped” at home while people were doing work on our house, so I had time to kill and I was just curious if there was a picture of him somewhere. Being nosy: gulp, guilty. :o</p>
We kids have to be careful and ASK her and respect her wishes. Usually if it’s a WHOLE FAMILY kind of portrait picture she doesn’t mind. If it’s a candid shot focused on her, she doesn’t want it on the internet.</p>