A digital footprint includes all traces of your online activity, including your comments on news articles, posts on social media, and records of your online purchases. This can also include the websites you frequent, any messages sent, and data you’ve added online. Whenever you post something online, share content, or even when a website collects your information by installing cookies on your device, you create a digital trail or footprint. This includes your IP address, login details, and other personal information. Information that others post about you also gets added to your data trail. It could show up when someone searches for your name online. Your online identity can influence different aspects of your life.
There are two types of digital footprints, active digital footprints and passive digital footprints. Active digital footprints consist of the data you leave when you make deliberate choices on the internet. For instance, posts you make to your social media channels are a form of active footprints. When you log into a project management or similar site, changes you make that connect to your login name are also part of your active digital footprint. A few examples of active digital footprints are, posting on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and other social media platforms, filling out online forms, for example, when signing up to receive emails or texts and agreeing to install cookies on your devices when prompted by the browser.
On the other hand, passive digital footprints are those you leave behind without intending to or, in some cases, without knowing it. For instance, websites that collect information about how many times you’ve visited it recently are adding to your digital footprint passively. That’s because you don’t choose to give them this data. They collect it when a device at your IP address connects with their website. This is a hidden process, and you may not realize it’s even happening. A few examples are websites that install cookies in your device without disclosing them, apps and websites that use geolocation to pinpoint your exact location and social media news channels and advertisers that use your likes, shares, and comments to profile you and to serve up advertisements based on your interests.
Your digital footprint is your paper trail and online reputation, nearly all your activity is being tracked and absorbed. So, the digital footprint you leave behind is important because it’s basically permanent once the data is available to the public, especially with social media posts. It can determine your reputation online, which is almost as important as your offline reputation. Employers can investigate potential new hires before making a final decision. Colleges and universities can investigate prospective students’ social media before sending out acceptance letters. Your words, images, and videos can be misinterpreted or even altered for malicious purposes. Bad actors may share your private messages with a larger group of people and potentially damage friendships, relationships, and reputations. Cybercriminals can steal and use your personal information for phishing purposes or create fake accounts using your data.
There are some actions you can take to investigate or see what your digital footprint is, enter your name into several search engines. Double-check your social media privacy settings, but don’t trust them, privacy settings on social media allow you to control who sees your posts on your social media streams. Spend some time getting to know these settings to use them fully. It’s also important to create strong passwords that have at least 10 numbers, symbols and uppercase and lowercase letters. Another thing to be aware of is to keep all your software up to date, computer viruses and other malware may try to mine your digital footprint, and they are constantly getting updated. To help protect yourself, ensure that your antivirus Sofware and other software programs are up to date. Remember to review your mobile usage if you don’t need it, it will be useful to delete it. You need to build your reputation through your behavior, so you have a positive, professional digital footprint by posting only those things that contribute to the image of you that you want your employer, banks, or professors to see.
Personal/Social Competency Reflection:
I know that my digital footprint can have both positive and negative consequences, including, that you can create any image I want to be known as, and the ability to transmit to a lot of people who you are, what I believe in, what are your hobbies, you can show people that you’re a kind, caring person. Using a digital footprint, you can build a life statement that will help you get to college or a job. But on the other hand, if you aren’t careful, you can build a bad footprint, with images or text you aren’t proud of. Or maybe you did something you regret, something you posted, and it’s really hard to delete. So I adjust my actions to always create a safe and nice image of me on the internet. I will take extra care of what I post, knowing that I will stay there for the rest of my life.
Some of my preferred strategies for maintaining a healthy, balanced online presence include only accepting and friending people I know in real life. Also, I try to never post something I don’t want certain people to see. I know everything online gets its way, to the places you less want them to be. I try to have varied passports. Another way I maintain a safe online interaction is by having private accounts.
By asking their permission to the people I took pictures of, I’m creating a safe online relationship, and I make a positive difference to my peers. Also, if we are making a classroom group chat, I make sure we include everyone, and that the topics discussed in there don’t make anyone feel uncomfortable or unsafe.
Resorces:
Digital footprint (ITSAP.00.133) – Canadian Centre for Cyber Security
Digital Footprint | What Is It & Why It Matters? | DataProt
What Is a Digital Footprint? Protecting Yourself Online (businessinsider.com)
By Maia.