How Your Digital Footprint Impacts Your Personal Brand & Future Opportunities

My Digital Learning Footprint My Digital Learning Footprint By: Cody

How might your digital footprint How might your digital footprint affect your personal brand and affect your personal brand and future opportunities? future opportunities? Your future opportunities can be heavily based off of your social status and your overall online "profile". Your digital footprint may affect the education you may receive. For example, although your grades may be "top", and you have many extra curriculars that you participate frequently in, there are still probably many others around the world who are just like you. That s why when "top schools" decide which "top students" they accept, they often look at your digital footprint, and depending on whether its good or bad, they will or won't accept you. For example, they might see that you are a good person "face to face" but a cyberbully/inappropriate person online. (e.g. if they see that you are mean to your friends or a hacker/cyberbully online, they will probably not accept you because they will think that you will give the school a bad reputation or even harm the school). Apart from education, your digital footprint also affects what job you might be getting in the future...

How might your digital footprint affect your personal brand and future opportunities? Nowadays, since everything is online, employeers always try to find employees online, by using a search engine like "Google" or "Bing". While looking for employees, they look at multiply candidates and compare their digital footprints. That is why, depending on whether your digital footprint is positive or negative, you may be placed ahead or behind others, who have the same skill set for the job. For example, if you have a positive digital footprint (being active and nice, helping others, etc.), your boss may, think your suitable (and better than other candidates) and may think that you will make a positive impact on his/her business, rather than if you have a bad digital footprint (e.g. looking at inappropriate content, swearing, etc.) your boss probably won't hire you because, although you might be suitable for the job, your digital footprint could negatively impact his/her business.

Before making friends/following people online, it's good to be aware of their digital footprint. By checking their digital footprint, you can be aware of what kind of person they are online. For example, they might be nice to you (in order to lure you into a trap) but in reality, they bully others online). Now, if you were friends with this guy, his/her bad reputation online may also make you look bad because you are friends with him/her. Don't be fooled of the fact that they are nice to you/compliment you. Although they may seem nice to you, see how they act around others. You have to regularly check what they do online. If they are nice to everyone, it's probably a "safe" person, but if their behavior changes otherwise, it's best not to contact them anymore (or if it s a friend, help them). Also, before adding them as your friend, you should make sure that they are always telling the truth. You should search up what they do and how old they are (e.g. if they tell you they are 15 years old (and let's assume you are 14 years old), you should double check because they might actually be 22 (or more!) years old!). If their ages don't match up, you should avoid them because the only reason they are probably lying about their age, is that they want to stock you and pretend to be friends with you. (or worse!) Why is it Why is it important to be important to be aware of one's aware of one's digital footprint digital footprint?

Strategies I use to Strategies I use to keep my digital keep my digital footprint safe footprint safe For every website that I regularly use and have an account of, I always makes sure I spent a lot of time, crafting and making a strong password. When making a password, I base the "base" of the password off of something I like (e.g. cats). After getting the base, I include symbols/additional letters that are easy to memorize and put them in between the base (e.g. @,#,z). Lastly, I always make sure I have some numbers in the password, which I can remember easily (e.g. 3945) and put them inside the "password" that I have currently. After doing all of this, at the end, I might have something that looks like this: "C@39a#tz4s5", which in my opinion is a pretty hard password to crack, and is also very easy for me to remember.

Strategies I use to Strategies I use to keep my digital keep my digital footprint safe footprint safe I always make sure that no one is trying to track me when I'm entering into my accounts, but there may be the occasional slip.... If I'm suspecting that someone knows my password (which rarely happens), I always change my password to another one (I usually have multiple backups). Also, on sites that have the feature of asking a security question, I usually set a security question that is unique (instead of an easy one like "What is your favorite athlete?, which, if someone sort of knew you, they can probably guess the answer in a couple of tries *mine is Steph Curry). By setting a unique security, most of the time, if a person tries to get into my account, they will almost always be stopped...

Strategies I use to keep my digital footprint safe Whenever I use the internet, I always check out the websites I'm using. Before entering a website, I usually check if it is secure. (e.g., I check whether a website "https" or "http") HTTPS website are secure, and HTPP websites aren't. If it isn't, I usually don't enter it, but if I do enter a website, I still check the ad content and see if it is safe, even if it isn't HTTPS (even though most, if not all "safe" websites start with HTTPS). If the website is "sus" and it is asking for personal information or even just asking you to make an account, I usually deny. If I'm not familiar with a website that looks safe, I ask my friends and family if they are familiar with it. If the majority of people use it, it's probably safe. But if I to a website that is less popular, but still safe, it's still safe to use it. :)

Digital permanence addressing the history and the development of digital techniques. It quantifies the expected lifetime of data that is stored on different digital media which influence the "permanence" So, to simplify things for my peers and teachers, digital permanence is the fact that everything you put online stays there for a set period of time, usually a long time and sometimes, even forever. Whenever, you post something online, digital permanence also emphasizes the fact that what you put online stays with you (and your history). How would you explain the idea of "digital permanence"?

Why should we be aware Why should we be aware of of "digital permanence"? "digital permanence"? Digital permanence allows us to more aware of the fact that what we post online, will not be taken off for quite a while of time. It allows more individuals to realize whether or not they should post something online. If they aren't comfortable for it to go online for everyone to see (just think of it going on a "popular stream" that everyone could watch), they will probably not post it because they don't want it to ruin their digital footprint/online reputation. Also, it allows people to looks at their mistakes and change. (e.g if someone realizes they are posting inappropriate content, they might stop and that could make their digital footprint better)

Citations How to manage your digital footprint. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://au.hudson.com/insights/article/how-to- manage-your-digital-footprint How to manage your digital footprint. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://au.hudson.com/insights/article/how-to- manage-your-digital-footprint DIGITAL PERMANENCE. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://prezi.com/kyhz_c2bwp0t/digital-permanence/ Cornelius, S. (2017, November 13). [Parent Tips] Help Your Child Understand and Build a Positive Digital Footprint. Retrieved from https://blog.edmentum.com/parent-tips-help-your-child-understand-and-build- positive-digital-footprint Figure 2f from: Irimia R, Gottschling M (2016) Taxonomic revision of Rochefortia Sw. (Ehretiaceae, Boraginales). Biodiversity Data Journal 4: E7720. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.4.e7720. (n.d.). doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f Digital permanence. (2020, September 14). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_permanence Digital footprint. (2020, December 08). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_footprint TED-Ed. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/user/TEDEducation TEDx Talks. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsT0YIqwnpJCM-mx7-gSA4Q