"I know what you did last summer…because I have internet."

The rise of social media not only raised possibilities but also some threats. The topic of digital footprints got more and more important. What did you do offline and online in your past and what can be accessed of it online? A lot of people participate in social media and share pictures, movies and personal data without thinking about all the others who can access this information too and what it can be used for. All of this is summarized under the name of digital footprint: "Who are you and what did you do online?"

But why are we talking about this topic - is there a need to talk about it?

Just recently Louise Fletcher was mentioning a Human Resources poll which showed that more than half of all Human Resources employees google prospective job candidates and 46% stated that they have already eliminated candidates because of what they found online about them.

So it does matter what you do online and what can be found about you online!

It can affect your life as well as your current and future working position. We would like to give some examples of digital footprints that went wrong:

The first example is about a video on YouTube, where some teenagers were tying a speeding camera on a tram in Zurich. Because this video was posted on YouTube the police was able to catch these young people and start legal actions against them.



The second example is about employees of Disneyland Paris and what they did in their breaks in between working shifts. It is left to say that those employees are not working for Disneyland Paris anymore.




Now think about yourself! How many pictures, movies or statements of your or produced by you are available online and who would you NOT like to see them…
Maybe you can not even remember everything, so go online and google your own name and see what will be shown.

What can you do if you want to clean your digital footprint?
Louise Fletcher suggests three measures:
1.) Change your name which is attached to your unfavorable information if possible (This can be a profile name or just the name written underneath an information or picture).
2.) Write to the owner of the specific website to ask to remove the specific information about you.
3.) Replace the unfavorable information results about you with positive ones by completing your online profiles (in a positive way), adding testimonials to your profiles (possible on LinkedIn) and commenting on serious blogs with serious content.

If those measures can not help you in some hard cases the best way to deal with unfavorable information is to prepare for it when you are being asked about it.

Preventing instead of fixing!

Our approach to this topic is slightly different from Louis Fletcher's. We suggest acting preventive when uploading information to the web and keeping in mind what you would like to have online about yourself and what rather not.
1.) If you open a profile on a social media platform and you know there will be content you do not want having connected with your name, do not use your name for setting up the profile and use a nickname or an imaginary name instead.
2.) Monitor links connecting your name with additional information in the web and remove them as far as possible if you do not like them.
3.) And the overall golden rule: Think before you act! Before you upload information to the web think if you really want everyone to see this information. Deleting afterwards is one thing; the memory of the web (like google archive that stores past information in the web) is another one.
In general you can say that you will always add information to your digital footprint online. The best way to deal with it is being aware of it and constantly monitoring it to prevent situations like "I know what you did last summer. I saw it online!"