I’d like to share an experience I had at an airport in New York (LGA, to be exact).  This post isn’t about saving money, but it is about potentially saving lives, and may be a great travel tip, too.  If I were a parent, I would be very upset and worried about what I am about to share with you.  

My husband and I were sitting in the airport waiting for our flight.  Across from us was a family of four (two adults and two older children, probably around the age of 21 or so).  We were there for a couple of hours, but we never really paid too much attention to them, other than just the normal trying to figure out the family dynamics (like many people, we are people watchers).  However, after being bored for a little while, I decided that I was going to try an experiment:  could I discover who the family was across from me without ever talking to them?

So, I looked them over and noticed the daughter had a backpack with a school name, logo and the word “softball” on it.  Of course, I Binged the school name and the word “softball” and I easily found the college:  the softball roster was one of the top search results.  I clicked on the roster and saw that it matched the logo on her backpack.  There were about 14 girl’s names on the roster, so I started clicking on them individually.  Surprise, surprise, each name had a bio, stats and guess what!  A photo!  After going through each name once, I went back to a few girls that resembled the one across from me.  The second one I looked at was the girl.  I showed it to my husband to confirm what I was looking at on my computer screen.  Confirmed.  Now I know the girl’s name, her hometown and where she went to college.

Then, wondering if I could go further with this information, I pulled up Facebook.  I typed in her name, the one I found on the roster, and tada!  Guess what popped up?  The girl.  She uses a shortened nickname as her Facebook name, but it was obviously her.  I knew for sure when I clicked on her profile and her cover photo was of her with the school’s softball field, name and logo behind her–usually cover photos and profile photos aren’t private.  

Now, I have her name, her nickname, her hometown, her current city, a list of her friends, photos of her friends and family, places she’s checked in, etc.  Although her profile was mostly private, there was still a lot of information on it.  If I dove deeper, I could have probably found her parent’s names and her brother’s name.

The scary part?  This took me less than 10 minutes!  The hardest part was I had to individually go through each girl’s name from the roster to pull up their information by clicking on it, then click back to the home screen, instead of hitting a “next” button.  I’m sure that effort would stop a stalker…

Because I’m not really a creeper, or at least try not to be (LoL), I took my phone with the Facebook screen over to the girl and her dad and asked if it was her.  She seemed a little distressed over it, as did her parents (I know I would be), but confirmed it was her.  I told them I found her on Facebook based off of her school backpack.  That’s all it took for me to find her.  In less than 10 minutes.  What if I was a stalker?  What if I had malicious intent?  What if….?  

To be honest, I have checked her profile a couple of times since then, thinking she would have made her profile completely private.  The first time I looked, about a week after the airport, it was still fairly public.  The second time, a couple of weeks after, information was still visible.  This time, as I’m writing the blog, other than her profile/cover photos, everything is private–friends list, additional photos, schools, etc.  I’m really happy to see she has taken this step.  

I really contemplated sharing what I found with them, but in the end, the reason I told her about finding her profile online was that maybe she might be a little more discreet in the future, maybe even save her life, who knows?  When you travel, try to conceal your personal information as much as possible.  For example, on your luggage tags, consider using your phone number, a work address or just a last name.  In this age of technology and social media, it doesn’t take much for someone to identify you, so we need to protect our identity the best we can.

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