In the digital age, a lot of personal data travels around the internet. It is virtually impossible to leave absolutely no digital footprint. In many ways, having an online presence is a requirement in modern society. It is however important to be aware of your digital footprint, what information of yours is out there and what you might do to improve your public profile on the internet. And I don’t mean profile on social media; I mean the profile someone can put together by searching for information about you online.
For this blog post, you will reflect on digital security and your own digital security practices by Googling yourself and seeing what you find.
Step 1: Google Yourself
How hard is it to find yourself on Google? As I demonstrated in class, it depends on many factors, most importantly on whether or not you have a common name. However, there are ways to refine your search to narrow down results even if you have a very common name.
For the first part of this assignment, become a private detective and do your best to find yourself on the internet through Google. Start by searching your name in quotation marks like so: “Caitlin Hartweave”. Then, if you need to, narrow down your results to find yourself amongst all the other people with your name by getting creative. Consider adding to your search query by including things like your hometown, the town you live in now, your high school, your university, your employer or past employer if you have one, etc. Nobody knows you better than yourself.
Dig, dig, dig and take note of what you find.
Step 2: Blog Post
Once you’ve found yourself, write blog post answering the following questions:
- What search terms did you use to find yourself? Were some less effective than others? Why do you think these search terms were effective in finding you?
- What results did you find? Why do you think these results came up? Did different search terms yield different results? Did you find anything surprising or unexpected?
- What is one thing you might do in order to increase your personal digital security? Why and how? If you need ideas, take the National Privacy Test to test your digital security knowledge.
Your blog post should be 2-3 paragraphs long. Once you’ve completed and posted your blog post to your blog, submit this assignment by posting a link to your blog post to the #week-13-security channel on our class Slack.