Week Five Digital Tattoos

On TikTok there are creators who will find a persons location or personal information (like their birthday) based on very little information. Once I saw someone find a birthday because they found a friend of the person's Facebook and then saw that they ran marathons and then they searched through marathon records to find the year they were born. It was both interesting and terrifying.   

One of those creators is @notkhanjunior and here is a video of her finding someone's birthday. 



(Video Credit: @notkhanjunior)


Most of these creators do these videos to help people understand privacy on the internet. I remember the first time I saw one I was a little spooked because I am far more public with my information online than people they are looking at.

This brings me to the term Digital Tattoos or Digital Footprints. This article  gives good information on Digital Tattoos and provides useful tools for any internet user.

Here is a little guide to start thinking about your own Digital Footprint.



(Image Credit: Kryitsis, E. (2015). 5 P’s for a positive digital footprint. Retrieved from https://elenikyritsis.com/5ps-for-a-positive-digital-footprint/)

I wanted to take a closer look at my own Digital Tattoos. This is when I looked at this website (https://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/).

I started by taking a privacy and safety quiz. I would share the results but it was a little unnerving how cavelery I can be online when it is all laid out.


 (Image Credit: University of British Columbia)

After this safety quiz I did take a look at some of the things suggested. I think in the future I will be more careful about what I put online. One of the most interesting questions dealt with text conversations. I love screenshotting things. I screenshot memes so I can share them later, or recipies I want to try, or things I want to share with my sister. 

It always seemed pretty inccous to me. However, I currently work at a law office. As a receptionist, I sometimes have to scan old files. I remember being surprised at how often emails and texts are used in court as evidence. 

The text question reminded me that I should probably be more careful about what I say over text, email, and messenger. However, I have also seen it advised if you want proof of something have it in writing. For example, if at work you are pointing out a problem and it is being ignored by management making sure there is a paper trail can help back you up.

We should not live in fear of the internet and second-guess everything we do, but staying ignorant is dangerous.

Another quiz I found on this site was "How Good Are You At Spotting Fake News"

 (Image Credit: University of British Columbia)


I am proud of these results. Part of my success for this quiz may be my background in Library and Information Science. In my classes, it has been stressed to me looking for good and reliable information and resources. Most people do not have that in their background. This illustrated to me that information literacy should be taught in schools early and frequently. 

One of the last things I did was look at the "Data Detox Challenge". It seems challenging and I might not complete everything but it offers quite a bit of good "hows" and "whys".

As someone who wants to work in libraries again soon with the public, these articles were eye-opening. I think having a healthy and safe relationship with the internet should be more incorporated with libraries. At the very least things like Digital Tattoos and privacy should be part of librarians' professional development so that they can teach those skills if appropriate. 

(Bonus content from Parks and Recs illustrating how I feel now)







Comments

  1. AstoldbyMsBee-LIS721April 14, 2024 at 7:05 AM

    Excellent post! I appreciate your observation that people tend to be more transparent on social media compared to private on platforms. Learning about digital footprints has made me more cautious about the content one can share online and how text messages and emails can potentially be used as evidence against someone in a legal context. I especially valued the resource you presented on determining one's date of birth. I believe that situations like this can also be frightening since even if you choose not to reveal personal information, there are still ways for others to obtain it surreptitiously.

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