Watch Your Step

Be aware of your trail.

What Is Your Digital Footprint

It is the trail you leave when putting information of yourself online. Video

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What Happens?

By using details about you (name, age, birthday, location) individuals can use your digital footprint to do mailicious things such as steal your identity.

If they have your name, people can use that to look you up. A person can use the information they find from your digital footprint to try to figure out more information such as your email or even your password.

If they find your phone number it can be used to scam or harass you.

Worst of all, if they find your address they may harass you further and even threaten you.

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Precautions

To be safe from this you might want to take some precautions.

Find your trail

First you want to search for your digital information and see how exposed you are.

Secure your information

After you have gauged how exposed you are check the privacy of your accounts. Delete any sensitive information that you have uploaded.

Delete

Delete any old accounts that you don't use anymore or those whose privacy settings cannot be changed.

Exercise caution

Be aware of what you put online. Remember that anything publicly online is accessible to anyone.

Email

Create different emails for different tasks (i.e. work, spam, subscription) so that your personal information is not connected to one central email.

Phone numbers and addresses

You wouldn't give a random person on the street your phone number or address, so why put it online for the world to see?

Media + Press




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