Online Privacy and Your Digital Footprint

Information about your online activity has value, just like money. There are ways you can decide who gets that information and how it's collected, and make it difficult for cybercriminals to obtain it. This guide provides these pages of resources to help you learn more:

• Your Digital Footprint: Learn what the Internet knows about you, how to see if a website is tracking you, and how to avoid being tracked.
• Strong Passwords: Learn how to create a strong password, test a current password's strength, and get help managing your passwords.
• Understanding Terms of Service: Learn what Terms of Service (TOS) are and why it is important to read them before using a service.
• Privacy Settings: Learn what commonly used third party providers do with your data.

The internet is:

• Public - once a text that mentions you, or a picture of you, is posted online it is nearly impossible to keep it secret.
• Persistent  - electronic records never disappear unless someone actively chooses to delete them.
• Necessary and extremely useful - most of us have to use it for our work and in our daily lives.
• Everywhere - even if we don't log online, digital records of our lives are collected by online purchases (credit cards, PayPal, online banking), through security cameras, by Fastrak transponders, etc.

and 

• Beyond our control - but we can take steps to manage our "digital footprints" and minimize risk.

Identity theft and just plain theft, online bullying (or personal threats), doxxing, "bots" interfering with elections, reputations destroyed or jobs lost - these are some of the kinds of damage that happen when we lose privacy online.

But most of us cannot live "off the grid" in the woods.  The good news is that we can take steps to minimize our risks online. We all need to watch what we post, sign-up for, and do when we are online.   

Be careful out there and proceed with caution!