Your digital footprint can be found by just searching up your name with some other filters. Your digital footprint contains a record that shows the history of everything you have done online. When people hire workers to be dependable and reliable, they will look at your Digital footprint. This makes your digital footprint something very important for things such as applying for universities or when looking for a job. Your digital footprint reflects your reputation and your ability to stay appropriate on the web. Thus, it should be highly prioritized to keep your digital footprint cleared of unwanted information. If you haven’t realized this now and you have found information that you would not like others to see, don’t worry there are ways to get rid of information that can hide your digital footprint.
If you want to keep your digital footprint appropriate and safe, you should always remember that the things you post on social platforms (Ex. Facebook or Instagram) will be seen by everyone. To keep safe you should keep in mind what you say in public. When a social platform asks to accept new terms and conditions (or any as a matter of fact), always at least skim through it. These social websites depend on you to not look at them and just blindly accept them. You should always be aware of cookies as they will save your data of what you do on the web. Cookies are data of what you do on a site that is transferred from your computer to the web so that the sites can advertise or suggest things that are useful to you. In these terms, they would often say to keep your posts and things documented, so be mindful of what you say. If you happen to post something that is inappropriate and you don’t want others to see it, all hope is not lost. Try your best to have these files deleted. This can include emailing the moderators of the site or sending another post saying you are sorry and that you did not mean to say it that way. However, just doing this is not enough. The information you put is likely to have already been archived.
To put it simply, digital permanence is the data that is stored in some hidden place on the internet where you do not have access. It may seem that clicking the delete button deletes the data forever, but actually, the information is archived somewhere on the website. This archived information is most reliable for employers as they include all the information that you have done, even if you think you have deleted it forever. It is kind of like your browser history that keeps all your history even after you close the tab. We need to take care of our digital permanence because they are very important for later jobs and they determine your reputation when you move on to adult life. When posting something, remember to look ahead and see if this would affect you in a positive way or a negative way. They also affect the people around you. If you gain a bad reputation, everyone else would also gain that reputation. Digital permanence is something that we need to be mindful of and make sure to keep clean.
To go along with this, I included a Powtoon presentation below:
As for myself, I could not find anything online (for real!). I tried searching my name, my address, etc. Nothing showed up on the website. Even my phone number does not have any information about me! Perhaps it’s that I do not use social media a lot or maybe it’s because I have bad luck… However, if you do happen to be watching any science videos on Youtube, you may or not see one of my comments. What do you guys think?
P.S Please comment on how to improve my presentations for the near future. 🙂