You're so vain you probably think this post is about you (Or: 53% of everyone you know is stalking you online)

According to a new Pew Research Center study, the Internet is watching you.

47% of all Internet users have searched for information about themselves online, but 53% of adult users have used the Internet to suss out information on family and friends, romantic interests, or business colleagues. Even so, 60% of Internet users aren't worried about how much information is available.

We all know how that turns out. You blow off work for a "sick day," dress up like Tinkerbell, and then have your face plastered all over the Internet.

"Name, address, and phone number are just the basics in a world where voluntarily posting self-authored content such as text, photos, and video has become a cornerstone of engagement in the era of the participatory Web. The more content we contribute voluntarily to the public or semi-public corners of the Web, the more we are not only findable, but also knowable," write the the authors in a wax-on philosophical introduction.

As one of the 10% of Internet users who have a job that requires them to self-promote online, you'll find a fair amount of info on me. (That's my outdated homepage up there at the top. Yay, SEO!) But that also pushes me into the category 22% of self-searchers who check their hit list "every once in a while." Fortunately I haven't gone quite so paranoid/vain to hit that 3% of self-searchers who makes "a regular habit of it."

Not yet at least.

Pew breaks Internet users down into four classes: The Confident Creatives (the 17% of online adults who don't worry at all), The Concerned and Carefuls (the 21% who actively limit their information),The Worried by the Waysiders (the 18% who are worried, but don't do anything about it), and The Unfazed and Inactives (the 43% don't worry about or limit what's out there about them).

I waver back and forth between Confident Creative (when I wear my rebel tech blogging leather jacket) and Concerned and Careful (when I wear my tinfoil hat). Frankly Facebook's privacy regulations both baffle and scare me, and I have an uncontrollable fear of Russian chat bots stealing my soul.

The study concludes that 7% of those who have searched for key people in their lives do so on a regular basis. I thought we were important to all of you, but, for some reason, my meta-self-search on Google Trends disagrees: "Your terms - joey seiler - do not have enough search volume to show graphs."

Where's the creepy, cyber-stalking love?

[Digital Footprints: Online Identity Management and Search in the Age of Transparency]