After you are done reading this article you are probably going to leave a traceable piece of data about yourself behind. We surf the web on an hourly basis visiting one site after the other, signing up to every newsletter, commenting on every blog post and then walk away completely oblivious of the footprint we’ve left behind. I am not talking about high tech guru stuff here but simple footprints that an everyday internet user can stumble upon and do with it as they please.
What is a digital footprint?
“A digital footprint is similar to the trackable clues of your recent visit to a particular online platform. In the offline world this equates to literal footprints, fingerprints, a scent or some items that belong to you.” says Steven Bosman from TotallyFreePeopleSearch.
How exactly are you leaving these digital footprints?
- Newsletter subscriptions: Newsletters subscriptions are meant to be confidential. They even promise you as much when signing up but these have a way of getting to the indexable part of the internet more often than these mailing list owners and platforms are willing to admit.
- Shortlist announcements: some organizations will advertise some job and choose to post the short listed candidates on their website. This is truer for university students seeking enrollment. as soon as those details are up, search engine bots will get hold of that information and plaster it all over their search results.
- Place of work website: When there has been a workshop, staff party or HR simply shares the organizational structure on the website such information gets accessed by search engines and availed to anyone who Googles you. This may often include a picture, phone number, your job description and other person details.
- Interest Groups: this might be a charity group, club or society you are part of. They may be sharing their member list or newsletters where you are featured over the internet.
- Offline newspapers and industry magazines where you may be featured and then that newspaper gets digitized and uploaded online.
- Commenting on community websites can get indexed easily by search engines. These often require you to sign up before you comment. Comment sections are usually free to access for search engines.
- Friends and family can share and caption pictures where you are featured in.
What is scary is that search engines like Google are able to help users filter results by time or date. This means whoever is investigating you can simply use these filters to track your exact steps or whereabouts over time.
So the next time you about to exit a site, pause and look back at what digital footprint you might have just left behind and decide whether to remove or leave it for future generations to know. It is advisable to minimize the footprint you leave behind online unless you want to make a statement, I was here.
