What's your digital footprint? Take care of it!
Social media has become an intimate way for many of us to connect with relatives and old friends when we share pictures of our families and celebrations for the various events in our lives. However, that also means everyone else is watching.
It is estimated that by 2030 “parents’ over-sharing of personal information about their kids on social media could cost almost £670m in online fraud”. How can this happen? We must first understand our “digital footprint”.
“Digital footprint”: The traceable and permanent trail of data made up of all of your online activity
For example, some parents may accidentally expose the location of their children through the geo-tagging function on Facebook or by “checking in” at these places and then sharing it online.
Malicious actors may take advantage of the content we post online unassumingly to build up a profile of our identity, which can then be used for nefarious purposes. Even though if profiles are private, "parents often find a false sense of security by being able to curate who sees this information, such as friends and family, but do not realize that a majority of kidnappings and violent crimes against minors are committed by acquaintances and relatives". (Source)
Image Credits: TheSocialWorker
What we post and share also has implications for the future, and we need to be cautious of what we post, especially young teenagers. Companies and universities will conduct online research on applicants and can rescind acceptance offers if found to have done offensive things on social media, such as sexually explicit and racially offensive memes. (Source)
Once something is posted online, it is extremely difficult to remove it from the Internet, and hence every post should be treated with caution before being posted online. How can we do this? Take a look below and some of these measures that we have compiled below for you!
Image Credits: Unicef
Communication
Many young teenagers may be unaware of how far the information they post online can travel and it is important for them to understand this.
Have an open conversation with them about the dangers of over-sharing and going through the social media platforms they use together with them to understand what they are exposed to and the potential threats they may encounter! Consider visiting each other’s social media profiles to see how much information someone could extract from you if they had the ill intentions to do so. By clearly illustrating these dangers, it would set an example for them to police their own posts online.
Image Credits: AppSec Stof
Privacy Controls
Take charge of your digital footprint by enabling privacy controls! Many social media platforms have privacy controls to reduce the amount of information that is exposed to those outside of our immediate social circles.
Ensure that your profile is set to private and that the photos and other media you post online can only be seen by those you’ve added or followed back. Go through your friend list or followers and ensure that you know and trust all who have access to your profile.
Image Credits: Glendale High School
Avoid Oversharing
Be careful not to share too much information online!
As explained above, tagging your location online may allow someone to identify where you or your children may be at specific times which could lead to stalking or even kidnapping. Constantly sharing photos of you or your children online could allow malicious actors to piece together information such as their school, their recreational activities outdoors, or other bits of sensitive information that we may absent-mindedly share. By restricting the number of photos we share and removing location-specific tags from them, we can make it much harder for someone to be able to track our children’s whereabouts.
Image Credits: WorkAwesome
Use false data / abbreviations
Some parents may maintain a digital profile for their young kids and many young teenagers already have their own social media profiles.
A good way to obscure our digital footprint would be to avoid using our full names or to use abbreviations for our social media profiles. Even slightly changing the date of birth on social media would make it much harder for someone to verify their real identity and hence protect them from predatory actors. Only give the name of your account to people you know in real life and trust.
Image Credits: euneighbourseast
Think before sharing
Pay close attention to what you post online!
It is important to consider thinking about how our posts may seem to outsiders. Some posts that are meant to be private or “inside jokes” between friends may in fact be offensive to an outsider and could have wide-reaching consequences.
These posts could be dug up in the future long after we’ve forgotten about them and as such, we should consider at the moment how these posts would affect us if the world were to view it.
So there you have it! We hope that these measures are effective in helping you control your digital footprint and educating your children on how what they post online can have far-reaching consequences. Information posted online can be very difficult to remove and we are often unaware of malicious actors close to us who may be collecting them for ill-intended purposes. Posts intended for friends and families can also spread far and wide and unintentionally cause harm to a wide group of people.
By understanding these consequences, we can exercise better responsibility on the content we share and make the internet a better and safer place to navigate for everyone!
(Written by Lech, edited by Thinzar)