A short guide to the meanings of these two terms

Digital Identity - The collective online presence one accumulates across a personal range of websites.

Digital Footprint - The traceable record that remains in the digital world, of a users interactions with the internet.

Your digital footprint is concerned with the trail/ traces your ‘footprints’ leave online.

It consists of the websites visited and in general the entire online presences accumulated for an individual or entity.

This includes digital inputs such as status updates, bookmarks, reviews, search results, and any other content created or consumed.

Whilst browsing online you will leave a variety of traces of your online self. Some content you actively volunteer, such as your Facebook profile.

However, some material is passive, meaning a site obtains it without your knowledge. For instance, this could be from the cookies a site stores in your browser.

All this data can then be combined to build a profile of you and your behaviour.

Digital Identity and Digital Footprint are mainly concerned with social media and personal branding both individual topics which will be covered in more detail in the later lessons.

For now, the best way to summarise Digital Identity is to say: it is an online identity adopted or claimed in cyberspace by an individual, organization or electronic device.

Like its human counterpart, a digital identity is comprised of characteristics, or data attributes, such as the following: Date of birth Username and password Online search activities Purchasing history or behaviour

For homework you will look at a list of people who got fired from their jobs, all because they never properly managed their digital identity.

For example, a teacher once had a photo taken with a drink in each hand smiling. Shortly after being tagged in the photo she was forced to resign.

Therefore, bringing to our attention the problem with leaving a digital footprint, or a poorly managed digital identity.

In most cases it brings together all aspects of your life for the viewing public, including the aspects you rather it didn’t!

Read through the following article: http://www.granvillecsd.org/webpages/l

grandjean/using_the_internet.cfm?subpage=635376

At this point, you should have a firm grasp of the topic and understand the terms Digital Identity and Digital Footprints.

Please answer the following questions, be prepared to share your answers with the class.

1. List some of the ways in which you can make people like and respect you?

2. Who might be following your digital footprints? 3. How can your digital footprints become a

problem for you both now and in the future? 4. What advise would you give other students

your age, on how to manage their Digital Identity and Digital Footprints?