The concept of having a Cyber-Footprint was not something new to me, however the in-class exercise of looking up my own name and trying to find out what the internet contained in relation to my life was an interesting experience. This led me to wondering what methods existed online to track down leads and find more information on people that I didn’t know of. During my search two videos came up that I found interesting, and I felt showcased how hard it is to truly hide a person’s information once it has been placed onto the internet.
The first of these videos was How The Internet Hunted Down This “Anonymous” Employee, Using His Own Photo, by the Youtuber Brew. This video discusses an online photo of a person at a Burger King standing in the lettuce that is used to make the burgers that they serve, and how the internet used that singular photo to pinpoint a precise location of where the photo was taken. Before explaining how this was done he first goes into the story of how a man named John Mcafee was found after attempting to evade arrest using a singular photo and the logic behind it such as how photos have EXIF data (Exchangeable Image File Format). The video also goes over how certain companies keep this information such as at 6:54 it takes a quote from Facebook which states that they keep information including “the make and model of the device used to take the photo, the camera settings, and the date the photo was taken…”. The video then goes over some methods on how to protect your own information and images in the future.