Today I will be talking about digital footprint but what does digital footprint mean. Digital footprint is defined as the information about a particular person that exists on the Internet as a result of their online activity. I had to look up my own name and see what came up about me. I was quite surprised to see all the information they had. They’re were things about the Coquitlam Minor Softball, all the dance rewards at competitions, trial over E. coli, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Google had come up with about 53 results for just searching up my name.

I believe that my digital footprint has appeared to be portrayed as a good example of what a good digital footprint should look like. I will talk about the control of identity for my digital footprint. I don’t put information about what my name is, where I’m from, and what school I go to. The reason why is because of privacy reasons; you don’t want to show people everything about you.

Next I will talk about how my digital footprint might affect my future opportunities. Firstly my future education, I really want to become an orthopedic surgeon and I have to go through 16 years of school to pursue my dream job. So having a good digital footprint would be good to have to get into a good university. Secondly I will talk about post-secondary school applications. Having a bad digital footprint can really impact whether or not you get into a university. Next I will talk about job and career prospects. For example if you graduate from Harvard top of your class, your prospects look great. My plan is to go to SFU or UBC for 4 years then go to the University of California. Those are really big goals and I need to have a clean digital footprint in order to achieve that. It also could effect family and friends because your friends could be following you on Instagram and you could be posting bad things and they might not get a job because of you.

A few strategies I have learned during this experience that keeps your media accounts safe is to use a nickname for a any account. You wouldn’t want to tell people your first and last name. Next is to check your privacy settings to make sure it is a private account instead of a public account. Lastly you must have strong passwords. Something that someone would not be able to guess. Some information I would tell to other people is to try to google yourself. They’re might not be a lot of information about you but they’re also could be a lot of information about you. Secondly don’t tell people to much information about you because someone could use that information and find out where you live. Lastly is to build a good reputation through your behavior. If you are going to comment on something say nice things to the person you are communicating with. Thank you for reading My Digital Footprint.