Digital Footprint vs. Digital Shadow: What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter?
Your digital footprint is the trail of bread crumbs you leave behind in the digital landscape. Think of a path through the forest. The websites you joyously hop over? Those are part of your digital footprint. The emails you send into the world? Digital footprint. That guy in your class you found using social media? That's the stuff too. Your digital footprint makes up a scary amount of information about who you are—and that was just in the digital sense. Computers can make predictions about who you are based on this, which is enough to give someone the spooks.
It's becoming more common for people to think there are two paths through this forest. One we just described, and one that people discuss much less often. The other path is the one with scarier monsters down the path: data brokers. These brokers can buy and sell information about you. All the other information on the path we didn't talk about earlier combines into this path. The second path—the significantly scarier path—is your digital shadow. That's what your dystopian monster novels didn't explicitly tell you: you only have to fear you and the really, really, really large shadow your data presents on other computer clusters. So go out there and make sure that shadow isn't scary; it might just be the next story you read about.
Digital Footprint vs. Digital Shadow
A digital footprint refers to the trail you intentionally leave behind when you use the internet. It includes your social media posts, your online purchases, or anything you upload to a website. Usually, you're aware of your digital footprint because it is the result of actions you have taken. This is powerful because it means you have some opportunity to manage and curate your online presence. You can choose how you want to present yourself to the world.
Your digital shadow is what big data collects about you, whether you're aware of it or not. It might include tracking cookies, your location, or information gathered by third-party apps on your phone. In comparison to a digital footprint, you might be more of a digital "spectator" than an outside influence when it comes to your digital shadow. It is passive, not active, so you don't have much control over what is gathered. This is problematic for many reasons and is something you should keep on your radar, especially concerning your personal privacy.
I think to some degree you must manage both your digital footprint and your digital shadow to have a good online reputation. The more traditional name for this would be "identity theft prevention." After all, they say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The cure in this case might be rather painful.
Defining Digital Footprint
A digital footprint is all the data created by all the things you do online. It includes your social media activity, emails you send, articles you read online, online purchases you make—basically, everything. This footprint of yours is divided into two types of footprints: passive and active.
An active digital footprint is all the information you mean to share online. Every time you post on Facebook, send a tweet, or comment on a blog, you are choosing to share personal information about yourself. The same goes for when you fill out online forms asking for your name, age, sex, home address, and so on.
But why does this information matter and why should you take it seriously? After all, there are a ton of people with your same name. Companies suffer data breaches every day and no one is running around in a constant state of panic. Well, the answer depends, which is why it is so important to prepare students for this kind of online management challenge at an early age.
A multinational bank may not need George's email address today, but they also already probably have it. And the reason why they don't really need it is because they already have his €16,000. Do you see now why it is so important to teach primary-aged children about this stuff? By the time they are my age, it will be too late... obviously.
Understanding Digital Shadow
A "digital shadow" is a term I use to refer to the accumulation of data about you that you don't leave, but which, instead, is gathered by third-party apps, social media platforms, and other online services. Once again, literally everything you do — down to a single click or finger movement — is data.
Every YouTube video you watch, every song you listen to, every article you read, every link you click, and every purchase you make (or almost make) gets added to the pile. This data is analyzed by entities that use this information and sell it to advertisers, data brokers, and other groups who want to buy, sell, or trade information.
Unknowingly — and perhaps even accidentally — your profile is being “fleshed out.” Data is gathered about who you are or might become. Personalities, occupations, hobbies, information that is relatively loose are replaced with digital-usage data that deserves more attention.
When analyzed and compiled across hundreds or thousands of websites, this information creates an unusual but generally comprehensive outline of the user. Notice the box on the left of this article. That information defines me, yet I don't control it.
I have no idea who those recipients might be — but they know a lot about me. Digital profiling has some obvious importance in terms of cybersecurity, identity management, and protecting personal and professional data, but the risk is there in your behavioral space, not so much in the protective cloudolutions, PaaS, IaaS models, etc.
There’s the main lesson of this chapter of the book; data is everywhere, and exposures exist in many more places than we think.
Managing Your Digital Presence
In the world today, people are more connected via the Internet than ever, and because of that, people’s information is far too easily accessed and can be used for all the worst things. So, how can one prevent the nightmare of Internet stalking from happening to them? One solution is to curate social media. By looking in the settings of social media sites, users can change the privacy settings however they like. Some users allow only their friends to see their posts, some only allow friends of friends to send them friend requests, and others make their profiles unsearchable. Curating a safer online profile is all that is needed to help prevent any further possible stalking or just any creepy occurrences online.
Curate social media in general: check. The next thing to surely do is to never give out personal information. Apart from the obvious advice to never say where your exact location is or your phone number or email, don't even say your personal likes and dislikes. Definitely make a completely new email to sign up for accounts online. For a password, use one that's never been used before. And for extra added security, enable two-factor authentication when able. Basically, do everything necessary to make sure that the account made is safe enough to not be hacked or that, even if it is, hackers won't find anything useful.
Now, after effectively hiding an online identity, users may be wondering how they can see what their identity looks like. Do a quick search on almost any site where an email is publicly shared with someone: users will quickly find that the information given is more than they’d like. It’s worrisome, but thankfully, there are services and tools that users can use to help them fix all associated problems, like Google Alerts, and other reputation and management services, so that users, themselves, can sleep at night knowing that they and only they know all about themselves.
It is essential to understand the realities of your digital footprint and your digital shadow to operate in a digital first landscape.
Your digital footprint is the record left behind of all the things you do online. On the internet, it is the record of the websites you’ve visited, comments you’ve made, or purchases you’ve completed. This "digital body" follows your digital shadow everywhere it goes.
There is also an alternate version of you; this is your digital shadow. In many ways, your digital shadow obeys that same set of physics that your physical shadow does in the real world. The difference is most of us are not the author of this collection of data. When you have searched for your own name and found a result on an old high school yearbook page or an address from eight years ago; this is due to someone or something else accruing this data on your behalf.
The best way to manage your digital shadow is to first be aware of it, then you are better informed on how to manage and shape it. Remember to — every once in a while — Google yourself to ensure you are familiar with the world’s most basic understanding of you.