Who is the digital me?

We have all done it.  

Looked up a person on the internet, or we should say the digital person. This is a good exercise to periodically perform. You will be surprised by what and who you find.  

When I go into Google and search for my name, I can find a lot of surprising results. Today I was a doctor with a horse farm who breeds hunting dogs. Now, when I look at these other versions of myself, I can determine where I lived my net worth, how many children I have, my marital status, my personal interests, etc., and all I hit was Google. This does not include social media networks or other websites.  

I’m asked two questions regularly, “Why do I care about my digital footprint?” and “How do I eliminate my digital footprint?”.  

The bottom line is that the more information that is out there for people to consume the more opportunities there are for someone to become you, learn about you, and ultimately attack you. You can’t eliminate your digital footprint, but we can minimize it. 

• On social media reduce the number of friends and limit who can access your posts. 
• Restrict the number of apps you use this eliminates the number of digital profiles that are maintained of you by third parties. 
• Create a burner email. Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft all offer free email services. Use this email for all the places that claim they need an email from you, but you don’t want to give them your main email account.  

The last point sounds funny but wherever possible go back to old-fashioned paper billing. It prevents important documents from sitting in your email box and being picked up by a hacker, which can then be used against you.