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How might your digital footprint
affect your future opportunities?
Give at least two examples.

Your digital footprint could either be helpful to your future, negative or not affect anything. It could be helpful by when a potential new job offer comes in, if they google your name and your social media, they might be able to see your accomplishments and previous jobs that you have done well in, or if you’ve ever been on the news for doing something heroic that would also be visible to them and it would increase they’re want to have you working for them. Or if you don’t have many things about you that have been posted online (there will always be at least one picture with you in it that is online even if you don’t know it exists) then it could put you in a positive or negative position because the job could want you to have a strong internet presence and if you don’t it could hinder your chances with that job. Or of course, worst-case scenario, the job looks up your name (on social media in Google, etc.) and finds some things that they don’t like.

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For example, they could find that you have very strong political opinions and not want to associate themselves with those opinions or because they know that it could cause them trouble in the future. They could even find an old blog post or tweet that shows a previous opinion (eg. homophobia, racism, ableism, sexism, etc.), and even if you don’t feel the same way now, the person who is supposed to hire you could be someone you discriminated against in the past. And it would sense why they personally wouldn’t want to hire you or associate with you.

Describe at least three strategies
that you can use to keep your
digital footprint appropriate and
safe.

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My advice would be to not post your opinions on serious topics without doing as much research on that subject before and knowing that you are in the right. Because if you were to see for example that someone was killed by a police officer and that people were mad and trying to get the officer in jail for his crimes, and you immediately without knowing almost anything, go and post online something about how it was the civilian’s fault and the officer was just doing his job and is in fact a great person. And if later it turns out that the killing was not needed and he actually murdered a very innocent person, that post you made might be seen by your job and get you fired for supporting a murderer. Another way to keep your digital footprint appropriate is to be mindful of what you sign up for. If you sign up to some type of inappropriate website and somebody sees that through your emails from them, or notifications, etc. it could cause a big problem for you, or it could just be a very embarrassing thing which I’m sure no one wants to have to go through. The last thing that I would definitely recommend that everyone does is to choose good passwords for everything. The reason for this is that people can quite easily get into all of your online accounts, and do whatever they want with your information, money, online presence, etc. and that can be terrifying and extremely damaging. Treat your passwords like a secret, never tell anyone them unless it’s necessary.

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What information did you learn
that you would pass on to other
students? How would you go
about telling them?

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I learned that you also should be very concerned about people getting onto your online accounts by finding out your passwords. I knew that it happened but I didn’t know common it was for people to use the same password for almost everything that needs a password which makes it way too easy for people to get into anything and everything. I am definitely going to be telling my friends and family not to reuse passwords and I am going to bring it up by showing them this article! Others can easily bring it up to their family by saying that “I read an article about…” and then reminding them to be safe and smart online. I hope that this article has taught you something that you found interesting, or plan to do in the future to help your future self, and if you feel like it, make sure to tell people close to you about how to stay safe online and leave the digital footprint that will help you in the future.

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