What Have You Revealed About Yourself Online?

Would you tell a complete stranger what you look like, where you work, where you’ve been, who you know, how much you earn, what you like to do and your opinions on a range of controversial topics? Well, guess what. If you are active on social media you may have already told countless strangers!

Just about all of us now have a digital footprint – a trail of data we have created while using the internet. This includes emails you have sent, information you have submitted to online services, and of course everything you have ever posted on social media.

How much of yourself should you post online?

Governments around the world are wondering how safe personal information is on the net. Look at the Facebook fiasco. As many as one in three Australians may have had phone calls and text messages tracked by Facebook over years. Facebook has confirmed it did log mobile phone calls and text history of Messenger users. But even before this last controversy I’ve been blogging about privacy risks online. Late last year I wrote a blog titled, ‘A Brave New World Is Coming That Will ‘Rate’ People Online’. I reported that the Chinese government is planning an online ‘Social Credit System’ (SCS) for all of its 1.3 billion citizens. According to the government the SCS will rate the trustworthiness and sincerity of all Chinese citizens. The communist government has given a licence to eight private companies to come up with systems and algorithms for social credit scores. Two huge data corporations are among the eight chosen companies. When setting a social credit score the Chinese government will look at everything from a citizen’s banking history to how much time he or she spends playing online computer games. At the time I said this was frightening and would destroy any hope of free speech in China. The social-credit system builds on the Chinese government’s history of monitoring and controlling people’s lives.

How big is your digital footprint?

But in that blog last year I also asked you to think about how much data there is about you right now in cyberspace. If you are a reader of my blogs you can complain that I’m not always a great wordsmith, but clearly I am on top – if not ahead – of some of the most pressing issues facing individuals today! In the wake of the Facebook scandal many social media users are trying to learn more about their own digital footprint, and they are shocked by what they learn.

Are you on Facebook? Facebook is the world’s biggest social network, and you might think of yourself as a client of Facebook. That is your first mistake. You are not Facebook’s client you are Facebook’s product. Facebook is selling you!

What does Facebook know about you?

After Google, Facebook is the world’s second biggest advertising company with almost $13 billion in revenue from ads last year. Facebook has a strategy of showing users ‘relevant ads’. For example if you are always posting up pictures of your dogs on Facebook you might start seeing ads for pet products popping up on your Messenger. Facebook has been collecting as much personal data as it can about you for years so it can show you the ads you are more susceptible to. Governments around the world are asking if Facebook is interfering in the democratic process. Did Russian spies use Facebook to influence the result of the last US election? Did Facebook play a role in the decision for Britain to leave Europe?

If you are a big Facebook user I suggest you download your Facebook data. Go into Facebook settings and click ‘Download a copy of your Facebook data’. In that file you will find all your photos, posts, even your address book and perhaps also private messages on Messenger, and maybe metadata of SMS messages and phone calls dating back years. What have you said over the years on your phone?

It is not just Facebook tracking you

It is not just Facebook that is tracking you. Every time a company gives a ‘rewards card’ it registers all your personal details and then every time you make a purchase with that brand the information goes towards building up a profile about you. Remember also, firms sell on information about you to other companies.

Over the past year I’ve also blogged a lot about building up an online business. The bottom line about online personal information is that it can either help you build a personal brand in business or it can destroy you.

Business people have ruined their reputations with just a few words and a couple of clicks, not realising how dangerous this new online world can be. Everything you do online, every post you put up or ‘like’ you click – you are putting yourself out there PERMANENTLY. If you swear and berate someone online it is there forever. If you like a politically incorrect photo it is there forever.

Keep yourself nice online

When you were a child, did your mother tell you to ‘keep yourself nice’? That means to always put on your best face in public – to behave yourself. Remember you are always under scrutiny in public. But the internet is also a public space. Remember, before a company employs or does business with you they research you online, and find out all about you! Do you swear, whinge, like inappropriate posts on social media?

In business you need an online presence

If you have a business or want to build up your own brand you must have an online presence. Potential customers or employees will look for information on the net that validates the claims you make on your brand homepage.

Think about how you present yourself at a job interview. You are polished and professional. That is the same image you should be posting online.

I suggest you do a personal digital analysis of yourself. Are you keeping yourself nice online? I want government to legislate to protect online data, but governments seem to be behind the eight ball, not in front of it. Given these massive data breaches around the world, you need to be keeping yourself nice online.