11 Tips For Managing Your Digital Foot Print
1. Use Privacy Settings
Let’s talk Facebook, shall we? Chances are pretty good that you can be counted among the 1.3 billion monthly active users of the social media giant, and there’s practically no other website that contains such a breadth and depth of personal information.
You should to put all of their social media accounts, including Facebook, on a short leash might be the most important step toward helping you manage their digital footprint. Look into Facebook’s proprietary privacy tips or get the works from Lifehacker.com with it’s “Always Up-to-Date Guide to Managing Your Facebook Privacy,”. If you need help setting this up visit http://lifehacker.com/5813990/the-always-up-to-date-guide-to-managing-your-facebook-privacy Links to an external site.
Complete privacy on Twitter is simple — you just choose to protect your tweets under “security and privacy” on the account settings page. But please note if you do this and one of your teachers uses Twitter you may not be able to communicate with them on Twitter.
2. Keep A List Of Accounts
Then delete the ones you no longer use. That myspace page you signed up for? Don’t just forget about it–find it and delete it.
3. Don’t Overshare
Of all the tips I will share this is the most important and is one that can be applied across the whole spectrum of social networking tools: Don’t overshare. As much of an alien concept as it may be to students these days, the only sure-fire way to avoid digital footprint trouble is for them to keep quiet about anything they wouldn’t want to share with everyone in town.
This includes usernames, aliases, passwords, last names, full-names-as-usernames, pictures, addresses, and other important information.
4. Use A Password Keeper
This is more of a security thing, but the worst kind of footprint is the one you didn’t make that contains all of your sensitive information. It’s too much work to remember 50 different passwords, and every site has their own unique rules. Until someone solves this problem, the best solution is likely a password keeper. If you need one check out the ones listed here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2475964,00.asp Links to an external site.
5. Google Yourself
You may be surprised what you find.
6. Monitor Linking Accounts
When you link your facebook or twitter account to that new site (whatever site that might be), you may not realize–or care at the moment–what you’re giving it access to. It’s usually safest to use a secondary email address to sign-up for new sites rather than granting this kind of access.
7. Use A Secondary Email
Whether you’re communicating with someone new, or signing up for a new social media platform, it can be useful to have a secondary email address.
8. You Don’t Need 12 Email Addresses
That said, you don’t need 12. Keep it manageable.
9. Sending Is Like Publishing–Forever
Every time you send a message, post, or picture, you’re publishing it the same way CNN does a news story. And the internet never forgets.
10. Understand That Searches Are Social
There’s another side to your digital footprint, too — it’s not always information that you choose to make public. Remember: Privacy controls or no privacy controls, Facebook still records and uses every scrap of information it gets to better determine its users’ marketing demographics.
Google pulls the same trick with search and browsing habits. If a student is logged into their Google account, the service tracks every keyword they search, every Web page they visit and every time they visit Youtube.
Adapted From Justin Boyle
http://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/digital-citizenship-the-future-of-learning/11-tips-for-students-tomanage-their-digital-footprints/