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

One example of your digital footprint affecting your future is if you’re applying for a job. Nowadays, the person that is hiring you will look you up on the internet to find more personal information.  Therefore, if inappropriate images or something bad that you’ve said comes up when searching you; even if it’s from years ago, you could be denied a job position.

Another example on how it could affect you is when you’re applying for university or college.  This example has similar reasons to the first one.  The only difference is, is that now the place you are applying at will deny your education because of something inappropriate you could have done years ago.

Describe at least 3 strategies you can use to keep your digital footprint appropriate and safe

The first thing to do to keep yourself safe on the internet is to make all your social media accounts private.  This prevents people you don’t kn0w from seeing your pictures, tweets, etc and keeps them from direct messaging you.

The second thing you should do is make sure your passwords are very secure. This will make it harder for people to hack you.  Also don’t use the same password for everything.  If somebody finds out your password for one website, or app  they now have the password for all of your accounts.

Finally, to maintain an appropriate digital footprint, you should follow the guidelines of the site.  don’t post pictures with nudity, use course language and mention alcohol and drugs.  Also don’t follow any accounts that have this content.  Another way to maintain appropriate is to not say anything racist, sexist, or anything on those lines.

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

I’ve learned that everything you do online is recorded. Everything you’ve searched on the internet and every website you’ve been on.  Its not just what comes up when searching you that’s on your document.

If the topic came up in a conversation I would tell them to never say or do anything inappropriate online, as well as even though you’ve deleted something, its never actually erased from from your digital file.  Also to keep your accounts on social media private.