What is a digital footprint?
Similar to physical footprints, this is defined as the unique trail of data that a person or business creates while using the internet. With how technologically advanced our society is, understanding your digital footprint is vital.
Digital footprints can appear in many shapes and sizes, ranging from publicized information to information that is collected behind the scenes, such as data collected from cookies. There are two types of digital footprints:
- Active Digital Footprint - this refers to information that is intentionally shared by users or businesses.
- Passive Digital Footprint - this refers to information that is created involuntarily online.
Examples for active digital footprints would be social media posts, reviews left online, sharing of personal information, downloaded information, subscriptions to websites, and accepting cookies on a website. These are actions that a user deliberately carries out that is creating your own digital footprint.
Examples for passive digital footprints would be IP addresses, your browser history, geolocation services used by websites you interact with, and backend algorithms on apps such as Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. These are examples of the creation of a digital footprint without clear and visual knowledge.
Why should I care about my digital footprint?
Caring about your digital footprint is in your best interest if you value your privacy, security, and reputation as each of these areas can all be impacted by your digital footprint. Your online activities can be used to paint a picture of who you are and can be very revealing. Considering your digital footprint and limiting it helps safeguard your personal information from potential unwanted exposure. When it comes to being perceived based on your digital footprint, potential/current employers, schools, and peers may visit your publicly available footprint (social media particularly). Having a positive digital presence may boost your reputation, while negative content can hinder it. The larger your digital footprint is, the more likely you are to be a target for cyberattacks. Focusing on minimizing your digital footprint will help reduce the risk of identity theft and other online threats.
How can I minimize my digital footprint?
If you have reached this point and you are still interested in managing your digital footprint, then see the below tips to help you minimize your footprint:
- Limit publicly available information: if you have social media accounts that are public, consider making them private and stay cognizant of who you allow to follow you.
- Stalk yourself: see how much information you can find on yourself by doing a google search. If you find information you would rather not have easily accessible, work on cleaning that up by removing it from the internet or make it private to public viewing.
- Spring cleaning: remove any unused accounts that maybe you have had since middle school, or that you created and forgot about.
- Don't use the same password for every account: seriously, don't do this. Make sure you implement strong passwords and keep them unique.
- Be mindful of what you agree to: when browsing websites, be aware of what cookies you accept.
- Don’t click on suspicious links: phishing is a commonly used method to target individuals and compromise their data.
The internet is not going away, understanding and being aware of how your actions on the internet affect you is something that should be highlighted. Just like you need to be aware of your physical actions, your digital actions need to be given thought and attention as well.