What are you doing? Your Digital Footprint and what it could lead to

29 Jul
2010


Many of us never spend a sec­ond away from some sort of tech­no­log­i­cal device. Whether it be com­put­ers, cell­phones, or GPS’. We stay con­nected. Technology has become almost as use­ful as air to some peo­ple to the extent that it has even become an addic­tion. But, this post isn’t about that. This post is about how our ties to tech­nol­ogy cre­ate a foot­print that can be traced, fol­lowed and dupli­cated by any­one with the right knowl­edge.

Have you ever won­dered why all this data about our lives is col­lected? When we log on to our com­put­ers we have an IP address that uniquely iden­ti­fies us. Not only by who we are, but by what we search for, how we shop and what our hob­bies are. Our exact loca­tions are tracked through our IP addresses as well as via GPS. Many ser­vices now offer the abil­ity to post your exact loca­tion at any time. Add to that the fact that over a mil­lion peo­ple daily log minute by minute and hour by hour their activ­i­ties via social-​networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

What are you doing?

Is the ques­tion, but gen­er­ally peo­ple don’t stop at what they are doing, they also tell where they are, where they are going, and what they are wear­ing. This is where my thoughts behind this post came from.

Anyone with a mind­set to harm peo­ple could lit­er­ally track a per­son via these “updates”. So much so that they can learn your work and recre­ational sched­ule if they desired. They can know when you are out of town, when you leave or are on your way home, and even many times who you are with. This type of infor­ma­tion could cause your paths to cross with this per­son.

An indi­vid­ual posted this update on his Twitter:

Sadly, on the way to that rehearsal he was shot and killed.

If some­one were look­ing for an oppor­tu­nity to harm him this piece of infor­ma­tion may have been of use. There is no evi­dence of this that I am aware of but this is just one exam­ple of how our dig­i­tal foot­print could play a big­ger part than we are aware of.

Just like a lit­eral foot­print a dig­i­tal one is a mark. Walking along the beach if you came across a set of foot­prints you could lit­er­ally trace the steps of that per­son. Now this is done dig­i­tally, but with a lot more than just sim­ple notic­ing the size of their feet, you could get a detailed pro­file on them.

Having this knowl­edge would you ever change the way that you use your dig­i­tal resources? Are you wor­ried about what knowl­edge peo­ple can gain just through your dig­i­tal foot­print?

Thanks for read­ing,

Literary Nobody

Toya Bryant has written 193 article(s) for this site

Toya Bryant aka Literary Nobody is a Freelance Writer/Blogger who promotes positive thinking and actions within the community and the family. She also writes about the positives and negatives of technology, internet security and social media.

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    […] This post was men­tioned on Twitter by Chela. Chela said: RT @LiteraryNobody: What are you doing? Your Digital Footprint and what it could lead to — http://​bit​.ly/​a​R​T​DCf […]

  • tony­fish

    Two promi­nent views on the area are “hide and be scared” or “get over it and embrace”

    As you point out you can try and hide and unless you are Robert Murdoch, who does not use a mobile, com­puter or have email, it is very hard to hide.

    Your dig­i­tal iden­tity is about all the data you worry about — pass­port, bank account, social secu­rity num­ber, div­ing licence and credit card.

    Digital foot­print is about the meta-​data — this is data about data. I don’t need to know who you are to add value. Google does not know your name (unless you Google your name every­day and then it may guess) but is able to add value. Their model is to take your data and through this cre­ate adver­tis­ing.

    Yes there are issues of risk, pri­vacy, lib­erty and value, but these are well debated and dis­cussed — how­ever, you are 100% right, your data has value, the impor­tant ques­tions are, how owns your data and can you be party to a share of the value cre­ation?

    I am the author of “my Digital Footprint” — more than wel­come to read the free online ver­sion http://​www​.mydig​i​tal​foot​print​.com

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    Hi Tony,

    Thank you so much for adding to this dis­cus­sion. Especially with your obvi­ous insight on the sub­ject. I will def­i­nitely read “Your Digital Footprint”. Yeah there is that other aspect of the data that we worry about as you men­tioned. Ironically I prob­a­bly don’t worry about those things prob­a­bly as much as I should. I agree you can never have true anonymity as long as you are con­nected to the inter­net so it is up to us to limit the amount of info we vol­un­tar­ily put out there.

    Again, thank you so much for your input :)

  • tony­fish

    I wish we did have con­trol of what we choose to put out, how­ever to gain free search we have give up some­thing…

    thanks for open­ing up the debate, it is the next bat­tle ground for the web

    T

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    I agree com­pletely. I do look for­ward to exam­in­ing this topic fur­ther.

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/2010/06/forget-big-brother-facebook-is-watching.html Forget Big Brother…Facebook is watch­ing | Tales of a Literary Nobody

    […] based on their knowl­edge they obtained from FaceBook. I wrote a post recently called, “What are you doing? Your Digital Footprint and what it could lead to,” dis­cussing the dan­gers of putting all our per­sonal infor­ma­tion on social […]

  • Anonymous

    Digital foot­prints — how­ever, unlike their sis­ters, beach foot­prints are not washed away by the sea and the pass­ing of time.

    dig­i­tal foot­prints are what we say about our­selves and what oth­ers say about us — and all the data that you talk about. Leaving a twit­ter feed about your loca­tion makes it easy for some. Technically com­pe­tent peo­ple (organ­i­sa­tions) don’t need you to tell them any­thing, just car­ry­ing a mobile gives away the data

    Great topic, either be scared and hide (impos­si­ble) or embrace and get the value to come to you and not some­one else.

    tony @ http://​blog​.mydig​i​tal​foot​print​.com

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    I agree with you Tony. You have writ­ten some great info on this sub­ject. The dig­i­tal foot­print cer­tainly is not easy to remove and is becom­ing ever more promi­nent. Thanks for the com­ment!



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