My Digital Footprint

I’ve had a fairly extensive life online. For most of that, I’ve been at least somewhat aware of the traces that get left behind. Those traces are my digital footprint. Most people have one. As the world becomes more and more tied to the IOT (Internet of Things), it’s more and more likely that our footprint has these small little wrinkles that we don’t even think about. How long before we have to seriously worry about someone hacking into the inventory on our fridge and being able to tell the world that we have a rotten avocado hidden away on the top shelf? Our lives are increasingly being broadcast in some way to the online world. And that broadcast is archived, by our choice or not, for so long as the servers that store it are kept alive. This makes it that much more important to curate what it is you put into that broadcast, and regularly check to see if your fridge is adding any more you don’t realize.

When I became a teacher, one of my first classes was a business applications class for a group high school freshmen and sophomores. I decided to add a short unit on digital citizenship. This was partially due to seeing some behaviors surrounding cell phones and online messaging that I felt was borderline as far as getting these kids into trouble. So off we went on a digital civics journey. In the end, I found that it is somewhat difficult to convince a teen that the things they’re doing now have a chance to live on in the halls of the internet’s memory.

Most of my online life was spent promoting my writing through the blogs that I owned and ran. As a result, I always carefully curated my online profile. I spent time making sure that what I left behind was positive, or at least neutral. And so, when we were tasked with researching our own digital footprint this week, I had an idea of what I would find.

A quick Google search of my name returned the same results it has for a couple of years. The first page is mostly dominated by a watch repairman in Toronto, Ontario who shares my name. For quite some time, I led the page, and his info and pages were 3 or 4 down the list. At some point in the last few years, he’s either gotten more serious about gaining the top billing or due to my retraction from the online publishing life, he’s gained it through attrition. By all accounts, he’s one heck of a watch repairman too.

All in all, my digital footprint is still fairly close to what I intended it to be. There are a few cracks in the mortar here and there that really should be repaired. I own the domain for my name (Shane Ede), but the content and design are somewhat outdated. There are a few odd websites and entries that show a little higher than they probably should. All of this could be easily fixable by spending a little time polishing up the website and pushing on some of the lower-ranked entries to rise above the odd ones.

What does our digital footprint look like? Does it have any random watch repairmen hidden away within it?