Anonymous Surfing? Check your Digital Footprint

We all do it, we surf the web and we leave footprints. A Digital Footprint is a term used to describe the digital traces that we leave behind on the world wide web.

In the organisation that I work in, I have reminded staff of the traces they leave behind when visiting websites and leaving their mark on them. This is important because a few slips of the keyboard and an individual can easily bring their organisation into disrepute.

The most basic footprint of all is your I.P. Address.

Every single computer in the world has a unique identifying number (address) and from this IP number you can find out several things about a person when their IP number has been recorded online. The information collected includes your operating system, geographic location, what ISP you are using, how long your visit was, what path you took to the recorded online site, where you went afterward and how many times you come back.

Google Analytics is a great example of how someone can track and trace your visit to a specific website. The level of detail this information contains is incredible, legal and slightly scary.

According to Wikipedia : In an online environment a footprint can be stored by a user being logged into a site when making a post or edit, that registered name gets connected to the edit.

Two years go I caught out someone who was trying to defraud my organisation by amending the terms and conditions on their website after we had agreed to them. I simply checked an Internet cache of what their indexed web page looked like a week before and of course, the terms and conditions were different. Fraud.

Very recently, I was able to successfully trace a username who left a suspicious comment online. A few queries to google later I was able to retrieve their full name, age, location, birth country and even a list of their facebook friends!

I believe everyone should regularly Google their name, username, email address and aliases just to find out how much detailed personal information there is about you online.

Bear in mind that the information on the Internet are just billboards on the highway, they are already there, they are not hidden. If you have anything about you on the net, the information is already more public than you can imagine.

Just remember, as you surf, consider those footprints and think before you say something stupid.