NOTHING is Private These Days

Cybersleuthing was quite the experience. I did a basic google search on my classmate and it turns out she has a common name. I found a bunch of pages that had her name, but it wasn’t her. I scrolled to the bottom of the google search page and that is when I finally found her.

I have never ever thought of googling myself and its crazy what your digital identity can look like. A good point was made in the class discussion that avoiding digital identity wasn’t always the best choice. If you don’t create your own identity then someone else could create it for you. I was alarmed that so much stuff showed up when I googled myself, but after I looked through it I don’t think any of it shouldn’t be out there. I wasn’t posting any controversial stuff or inappropriate stuff. I do want to look more closely into my privacy settings and make sure I am protecting stuff like my address and phone number, but I think I have created a positive digital identity for myself.

After watching this video I became even more aware of my digital identity. As much as I think my digital identity is positive, I do remember getting into a “Twitter war” with a peer in high school. I posted some mocking tweets into response to things she had tweeted about me. The Twitter account I posted from doesn’t exist anymore, but chances are if you dig deep enough those tweets still exist. My life could have been totally different if someone had retweeted my tweet and took it the wrong way. Just like Justine assumed she was just tweeting to her 170 followers that was not the case. I here the quote over and over again about don’t post something you wouldn’t want your grandma to read and this is so so so accurate. Don’t post anything you don’t want everyone to read.

I have learned so much about digital identity and I am a lot more aware of what my digital identity looks like. As a future teacher I think this is something that should be integrated into the Saskatchewan Curriculum eventually.