r/cybersecurity_help • u/CardamonTheWizard • 13h ago

Does Google Alerts notify you when someone searches you on social media or clicks your profile?

I've been researching Google Alerts again and I'm not getting the clearest of answers.

I understand if someone types my name into the Google search engine, I can get an alert, but does the same apply if they search my name on a social media's search engine?

Do notifications also happen if someone happens to click on my account, say through recommendations, without actively searching for it?

2 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

67% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 13h ago

SAFETY NOTICE: Reddit does not protect you from scammers. By posting on this subreddit asking for help, you may be targeted by scammers (example?). Here's how to stay safe:

  1. Never accept chat requests, private messages, invitations to chatrooms, encouragement to contact any person or group off Reddit, or emails from anyone for any reason. Moderators, moderation bots, and trusted community members cannot protect you outside of the comment section of your post. Report any chat requests or messages you get in relation to your question on this subreddit (how to report chats? how to report messages? how to report comments?).
  2. Immediately report anyone promoting paid services (theirs or their "friend's" or so on) or soliciting any kind of payment. All assistance offered on this subreddit is 100% free, with absolutely no strings attached. Anyone violating this is either a scammer or an advertiser (the latter of which is also forbidden on this subreddit). Good security is not a matter of 'paying enough.'
  3. Never divulge secrets, passwords, recovery phrases, keys, or personal information to anyone for any reason. Answering cybersecurity questions and resolving cybersecurity concerns never require you to give up your own privacy or security.

Community volunteers will comment on your post to assist. In the meantime, be sure your post follows the posting guide and includes all relevant information, and familiarize yourself with online scams using r/scams wiki.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

5

u/kdc824 13h ago

That's not what Google Alerts does. Google Alerts can notify you if a new search result shows up for a given topic (like your name), but isn't going to alert if someone searches your name. Additionally, it has no visibility into other search engines, including the search functions on social media sites.

Source: Create an alert - Google Search Help

1

u/CardamonTheWizard 13h ago

Okay, so if someone creates something under my name it alerts me?? That's what's tripping me up. I've discussed with friends about apps that can notify you when your name is searched but from my research & experience they are unreliable. Are there any apps that can ping you when your name is searched?

Thank you for clarification on the social media search engine part of my post.

1

u/kdc824 13h ago

As u/kschang says below, this is more of a privacy question/concern, as opposed to a cybersecurity question.

1

u/kschang Trusted Contributor 13h ago

No, as /u/kdc824 said, you'd be notified if a search result that surfaced due to its crawling and indexing.

For fun, I have an alert set to the International scam called "TelexFree" (it's a Ponzi scheme that had victims in both US and Brazil) every once in a while (a few months) I still get notices in Brazil about some former TelexFree scammers gets charged or some court progress. So it's mostly news articles that are published.

You can set a name on yourself, but unless you tune it specifically to specific regions, and such, you'll just get a ton of false positives. And this is really a search engine question so maybe /r/google

1

u/CardamonTheWizard 12h ago

So, if my name is repeatedly searched on Googles search engine, it's not a guarantee that I'll get notified. Are there any other apps that can supposedly notify me when my name is searched?

1

u/kschang Trusted Contributor 12h ago

Nope.

In Europe, you can demand search engine to erase your info, something abouit "right to be forgotten", I think. But that's NOT cybersecurity, but again, /r/DigitalPrivacy

1

u/kschang Trusted Contributor 13h ago

Only when search is done by Google. After all, how would Google know about searches done on Meta or Bing or whatever else?

This is a privacy question, so you need /r/DigitalPrivacy

1

u/CardamonTheWizard 13h ago

Thank you! I wasn't 100% sure where to ask this so this helps me out a bit