Cyber Sleuthing Challenge

This week I Cyber Sleuthed Grace, and it was a challenge! She has excellent knowledge of online privacy! I was able to find her Facebook, which isn’t under her full name as well as her Instagram. With this, I learned her physical appearance, where she is from, what she is studying, and that she is a dog owner. I was not able to find her birthday or age, though! I found a few articles about her figure skating accomplishments, which gave me the name of her parents and where she was from. Of course, I had access to her Twitter and Blog because of this class. My only suggestion would be for Grace to link her website on her Twitter, just because we were all suggested to do so! Otherwise, her social media presence looks excellent.

An avid traveller, I also learned that Grace spent time working in other countries where she was able to teach English to women and girls who were healing from the trauma of sex trafficking, as well as worked as a teacher assistant in a kindergarten classroom. She is also a dog mom and has many posts featuring her family, and what I am assuming is her significant other. This leads me to believe that Grace is a kind, caring, loyal person, and I would not hesitate to hire or be friends with her! I don’t think she is an undersharer or oversharer. She often posts on Twitter, and I believe that if I followed her on Facebook or Instagram, she would share often enough as well. She has 21 posts on Instagram, which I consider to be an average amount.

Grace is learning to cross stitch for her learning project, and also enjoys figure skating. She even helps with the local CanSkate program. While trying to find information on Grace’s Facebook, I wondered how easy it was to find out information about me on my Facebook. On Sunday, I took to Facebook and tightened up my privacy settings.

I relate to this article about having multiple accounts for different purposes. My Twitter is my professional space, where I share and find resources. I wouldn’t expect my family to follow my Twitter because they wouldn’t be interested in what I am posting there. The same goes for my friends, except for those who are also going into the teaching profession. My Facebook is mostly a space for my family and my close friends. I also help out with business Facebook for my Dad’s Autobody business as well as Liv Fresh where I used to work.

So on Facebook alone, that is three separate accounts! My Instagram is a place for my friends. I also have relatives follow me, but not as many as I have on Facebook. I also have had a few Instagram accounts. I had my normal account and then accounts for music and photography. I didn’t want to post these on my normal account because I did not want to annoy my friends. This way, if they are interested, they can follow those pages. I have one old account on TikTok that, for the life of me, I cannot log back into and make private. These videos range from 2015 braces Brooke to 2018 no braces Brooke. Then I have my new TikTok, where I made my Learning Project video and share videos with my friends. Finally, I have my Snapchat, where I communicate with my friends privately.

Watching the Monica Lewinsky TED Talk I had one huge takeaway. She talks of how her parents knew her humiliation, and knew to watch out for her. Parents today are in the dark about their child’s online lives and possible humiliation. How are parents supposed to protect their children from things that are unknown to them? Monica relays that most parents do not know until it is too late. It is also all too easy for people to hide behind their screens and fake online personas and profiles.

I’ve added below, an interesting video I thought relates to what we are talking about. In this video, Danny Gonzalas creates a fake identity and social media account as an experiment. He is a YouTube comedian, and I enjoyed the video. It is quite a long video and fair warning; there is the occasional use of harsh language! Let me know what you think!