The internet is forever
So said by those who chastise people trying to remove their personal information off the internet and undo their infamy for whatever reason. It is best to understand this, and the extent of one’s digital footprint, before they encounter an undesirable situation.
The Canadian Center for Cyber Security gives the essence of the issue, that “Digital footprints contain sensitive information that is valuable to cyber threat actors”. That is that information is valuable, and just because your information is trivial to you does not mean it is universally useless to the “Hackers”.
The reasons why this information is desired is due to the usefulness of this information. Google, the purveyor of digital tracking has many methods of gathering wealth with information. With a sufficiently large amount of information it is possible to make use of “Big Data” in order to provide value, such as for example “Tracking consumer behavior and shopping habits to deliver hyper-personalized retail product recommendations tailored to individual customers” (What is Big Data?). This might be considered a good thing, but there are issues of data breaches that make the very personal data become essentially public, available to all the bad actors who want to use it for their own purposes. You might be hidden by anonymity, but does it make sense to rely on that?
The digital footprint is not just a single block of nondescript information and is generally divided into two sections, that which you choose to reveal and that which you don’t choose. The main area where you can make choices that impact your digital footprint is in the area of the things you choose, otherwise known as the Active Digital Footprint.
Returning to The Canadian Center for Cyber Security, the Active Digital Footprint includes:
- Social Media Posts
- Filled out Online Forms
- Browser Cookies
What options are available follow from these, and seem quite simple.
“Read privacy policies and terms of use.”(Digital Footprint). This option is the most time consuming. What a corporation allows should be found on their terms and conditions, if they decide to act ethically. Furthermore at this point the program is often already purchased, which means that all the cost has been already sunk.
“Disable cookies, if possible”(Digital Footprint). Another simple choice. Many corporations and websites offer or order the user to allow cookies. Sometimes they make it optional, but if you believe that the site’s security might not be sufficient, then don’t make the data available.
Good Passwords. If you have one Password, then you place all your information and programs behind one digital key. There only needs to be one breach for everything to now be open. Make the passwords different, but rememberable.
Some advice on passwords. Remembering is better done in chunks, so if you are able to remember some parts of a password and put them together in new and unique ways it will be easier to remember than to have the perfectly unique password. This does cause some issues if you are predictable, but having some dozen parts of passwords that are permuted, re-arranged, and not used all the time can make a reasonably safe and remember able password. Putting a password on paper makes it available to anyone who sits at your desk, so is not suggested.
Digital footprint (ITSAP.00.133). Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/digital-footprint-itsap00133#defn-cyber-threat
‌What Is Big Data? (n.d.). Google Cloud. https://cloud.google.com/learn/what-is-big-data
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