Online Presence

My Personal Online Footprint

When reflecting on my online footprint, I realized that it was much bigger than I once thought. I have had a Facebook account since 2012, so about seven years now. Although I do not post on it as much as I did in high school, my friends and family still add photos of me and tag me so the photos show up on my profile. If I do not want the photo to show up on my profile, I can untag myself from my friend's post. When we read the story in class “I'm 14 and I Quit Social Media" I related to it because my mom also posted pictures of me online even before I had social media for her friends to see. I also got Instagram around the same time as Facebook. My account is on private so if someone looks up my name on Instagram the only pieces of information that will come up are my username, my profile picture, and my bio. In order for them to see the rest of my profile and pictures that I post, I have to approve them to follow me. Just a few months ago I also made a twitter account for my government and PR class. My teacher required that we have one and follow him so we can see articles he posts which are relevant to our class. However, I have never posted anything on the account and I just go on it to see what he posts once a week, usually a day before the once a week class. If someone went to my Twitter account the only thing they would see is my name because I have no posts or anything. I also have a Snapchat account that I rarely use and I am not sure how the privacy setting work on that app. But if I do post a story on the app, only the people that I have added back can view it.

I also have other forms of social media including a LinkedIn, blogger account and Spotify. For Linkedin people can see what I posted on my profile, which is just a picture and work experience. I believe that anyone that goes on my blogger account can see what I have posted and I have never looked into the privacy setting for this. As for Spotify, all of my playlists are private so the only thing people can see is my username and the artists that I follow.

Any photos I post on Instagram or Facebook are all very clean. Before I came to college I was always careful to not post any pictures with any cups that looked like they could contain alcohol. However, after joining a sorority here at High Point University I have been even more cautious. My sorority encourages and reminds us that we want to keep a clean online presence, even after we are 21. I always have this in the back of my mind and think about how future employers would not want to see me in a picture holding a cup that could contain alcohol. I do not want to limit my opportunities by posting pictures with anything that could put a bad image out about myself. Even after you are employed it is essential to keep your social media clean. To read more about how social media can get you fired read the article “Can an Employee Get Fired Over Social Media Posts".

When we looked ourselves up in class I was shocked to see that on the first page of results there was a site called fastpeoplesearch.com. The link had my father's name and our old address and it listed me as related to him. This was very scary to see and I have no idea how that information got online. I am thankful that the address listed is somewhere we currently do not live but it got me thinking how long that address was online and if it was available to the public to find when my family lived there. This class made me want to look more into my online presence and figure out how websites such as fastpeoplesearch.com have my information.