Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, offered by, of course, Google. The service sends emails to the user when it finds new results - such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research - that match the user's search term(s).

You can use Google Alerts to monitor the web for pretty much anything. Whatever search terms you add to your Google Alert will result in an e-mail when Google finds new content for that search term.

For privacy and security, I recommend creating Google Alerts for your name and variations of your name, your telephone number, and your address. Creating a Google Alert for your key personal information can warn you if it appears on-line. (Note here that whatever information you use to create a Google Alert, you are providing that information to Google and asking that Google search the web for that information. You should consider carefully whether you want to create Google Alerts for highly sensitive information like SSNs.)

To create a Google Alert you need to be signed into Google and go to the alerts page. Here you enter your search term(s) and how you want the alerts delivered.

For most people, without a strong public presence, you are unlikely to get any alerts on your key personal information. Still, it only take a few minutes to set up a Google Alert, and this may just give you early warning if your personal information ends up visible on the Internet.