Privacy means that you decide what information about you is visible to others. Protecting our privacy has become increasingly challenging. Every action we take online, such as social media posts and online purchases, adds to our digital footprint. A digital footprint is a trail of data that can reveal a lot about our personal lives.
Here are some tips to help you manage your digital footprint:
- Think about whether you are sharing information with a wider audience than you intended.
Choose carefully who is allowed to follow you on social media. Only accept connection requests from people you know.
- Check and update your privacy settings regularly on social media and other platforms so that you can control who sees your information. This allows you to decide which information is visible only to your connections and which information is publicly available.
- Ask yourself these questions:
- Does the photo contain details you do not want to be public, such as your location, faces or your home?
- Are you being sarcastic or joking in a way that could later be taken out of context?
- Could the message or photo cause harm if it spread beyond your circle of friends?
- Use strong, unique passwords for different accounts and enable multi-factor authentication.
- When you ask yourself the following questions, you become more aware of what you are sharing and with whom:
- Is there anything in the photo that you do not want to make public, such as your location, your home or faces?
- Could your joke or sarcasm be taken out of context later?
- Could this cause harm if it spread beyond your circle of friends?
Remember:
What goes on the internet stays on the internet.
