How to Manage Your Digital Footprint While Traveling Abroad: Essential Tips for Online Privacy
In today's digital age, we create a digital footprint — the trail of crumbs we leave behind with our social media posts and updates, online purchases, and location data —which can be read and interpreted pretty keenly by foreign governments and most other companies, allowing them to make a fairly accurate (and valuable) impression of us. In other words, we have given up the age-old cat and mouse game of "I've got a secret!" (the foundation of all traditional personal information security measures to hackers) in a brave new world of the 21st-century global exchange.
This is problematic for at least three reasons:
#1: No one wants you to know: Your new out-of-town or out-of-country location is now relevant to a global community of watchers (who may be interested in at least your vital statistics, i.e. your name, age, and location, for any number of things —again, mostly marketing, but also to aggregate data to predict women's domestic annual incomes or some other odd research project — or, to a criminal element among us: INTERPOLL, for example; or, to a foreign government: the government of Turkey, who informed me by text when I was in Istanbul last week exactly what to do for hospital care in the event I should become ill. And about test results (and what to do if positive?).
#2: Too broke for that: A confirmed positive COVID-19 test result (not even a high temperature reading) could seriously limit current (and future?) international commercial air travel opportunities.
#3: The treasure at rainbow's end: COVID-19 tests worldwide are not cheap, averaging roughly $154 USD each. In Istanbul, the government currently forces tourists to submit an entry test for $18, and then again tourists must test again within 24 hours of applying for a government-issued negative test receipt for another $18! These expenses add up very quickly.
Meanwhile, to avoid being a mark, don't disclose your travel information worldwide until absolutely necessary (as when passing through customs and/or immigration). Don't Snapchat through Customs, people! Take your shot inside and keep quiet about where you're going this summer until you return.
Also, I recommend enabling "disappearing tweets." Use the "Who Sees What" tab on Facebook. Avoid, where possible, the repetition of your name, age, location, sex, politics, and interests online. Because the internet has a long memory and never forgets the reason for which it was invented (the facilitation of the exchange of commercial opportunities and international scientific interest; i.e. porn and global market capitalization), protect your personal vital information at all costs! Just as Jesse Eisenberg declared to the world in the second Facebook movie, "You don't care what we're doing with your information — you're going to keep posting on our pages because they are cool!" because who doesn't like cool stuff?
Don't become reduced to a set of relevant market data. Avoid the bait and the fisherman's (or fisherwoman's) hook! Refuse to be a mark. And don't get left.
Social Media Management on the Go
Managing your social media accounts while traveling can be a double-edged sword. Posting in real-time about our travels allows us to share our experiences with our friends and followers as we're having them. The upside to this is that we may be enhancing our experience by forcing an interaction or a back-and-forth comment chain with our followers. On the other downside, we also face the glaringly obvious fact that we are indeed sharing our exact location with anyone whom we may or may not know—spelled out for them so candidly that it takes the fun out of being discreet! Another downside is that you could be missing out on the travel experience while you are spending copious amounts of time "documenting" your trip instead of living the experience outright.
I find that waiting to post on our individual social media accounts allows us to craft a more well-thought-out narrative of our journey. By doing this, we're able to post our best pictures and type out a fun little snippet of our experience under every photo. This leaves those hardcore stalkers who scroll through your Instagram feed a lot to look at!
Before you go about learning these platforms on which you can do this, the first order of business is to limit who sees the posts that are currently visible to the public. Privacy should and will always be first when it comes to viewing what I would argue is an "online version of ourselves." Because if we're being completely honest with ourselves, 99% of the people who follow us online aren't going to be people whom we get coffee with. Learn to close the places you hang out (specifically the online ones)!
Data Security Best Practices for Travelers
Securing your devices and data are important actions to take. This is especially true with the rise of cyber threats against us. Installing and using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is one of the easiest ways to prevent these kinds of attacks on you. A VPN protects your computer by encrypting your connection to the internet so it cannot be intercepted by others.
This is extremely useful if you need to access your banking details or personal emails while stopping on your trips. It's unlikely any hacker will gain access to your encrypted feed.
Public Wi-Fi networks are some of the most common ways to be hacked. These are often hotspots where many people are prone to using an unsecured internet connection. The easy way to avoid having your information stolen and your assets protected is to use a VPN to protect your internet feed when possible.
Data theft has been shown to happen most frequently if you're spotted to use unsecured Wi-Fi on and off frequently. Be sure to make the switch for a safer, more reasonable coverage at a certain price range to protect yourself.
Building a Positive Digital Footprint
Building your personal brand as you explore the world doesn’t simply mean chronicling your adventures. It’s about thoughtfully sharing the moments that tell a story to the people who are discovering your content. Have fun curating a feed that shows off all the great food you’re eating, the people you meet, and any other unique travel experiences tied to your interests! It’s a great way to show people what you truly value in life, which may be different from what they're used to seeing. People, even those who don’t know you personally, may feel more connected to you because they’re interested in and can relate to the type of content you're putting out there. Basically, sharing is good. But also, share responsibly. When you travel, the locals and the places you visit are sharing something unique about the world with you. So respect these communities when you include them in your online content. (Yes, include. Because it’s exploitative to put them on display.) Don't misrepresent a people or a culture, use language and images that perpetuate harmful stereotypes about a place or a community, or tell a story that positions you as the heroic traveller and characters you meet as helpless, impoverished locals whose lives are uplifted by your generous tourist spending and disruptive presence, totally ruining the environment and local people's way of life. But also, just don't do it, okay? Oh, and lastly—because I can't really do a complete three-part series on personal branding without talking about how so many of us are practically living online during this pandemic—be nice to people on the Internet. Engage with your audience (+ potential audience) online beyond stalking their profile to see if they've used this info in a previous post orstory! How you decide to respond (or not) to comments on your posts, what you share (aside from your own original content) on your page—from #repost-ed content on food or local businesses you want to support or #ad posts to tagged photos and posts in your IG stories—and little (or big, if that's your thing) details you put out about your life online all contribute to people's understanding and assumptions of who you are and what you represent.
Understanding Your Digital Footprint
A digital footprint is the trail of data you create while using the internet. It includes both active and passive data creation. Active data are the things you share intentionally—social media updates, blog posts, and comments on blog posts or articles. The passive data are collected without the user’s knowledge—the websites a user has visited, their cookies, and their browsing history or "clickstream." It is all the data you leave in your path as you travel around the internet.
Traveling and living abroad also can significantly complicate your digital footprint. Most often, these opportunities allow people to meet different social and cultural groups of people. This typically means much more online activity (new content creation and engagement) and makes their account activity very easy to find. This opportunity also introduces both reputation management and privacy and digital security challenges. More content creates more opportunities for people (the audience), proactively or incidentally, to find and scrutinize content. There are privacy and digital security challenges because people traveling often use public Wi-Fi accounts, which can make online identities, and accounts, more susceptible to hacking and fraud.
Also, the way you conduct yourself on the internet, in general, is very important for reputation management. It sounds simple, but thinking about whether you should share something or not before it is shared can save a lot of headache and potential damage down the road. In particular, travelers should be aware of the audience "hearing" the shared message. There are striking regional perceptual differences about what web content is "acceptable" or not acceptable on social (or any digital) media. Certain pictures or content are fine in one region but may scare or offend people in a different region.
The Importance of Online Privacy While Traveling
When we travel, we tend to post that information somewhere online, whether it's a destination in our navigation app or a "check-in" on Facebook. Sometimes we even post pictures in real-time to our various social media audiences. Attacks can be crimes of opportunity. In this case, sharing your location may indicate to a criminal that you aren't home, or that you're far away from your hotel (which you also might have checked in to), increasing their likelihood of committing theft.
Many people polled by the security research firm, Kaspersky, have reported that their data have been compromised while on vacation at a hotel, hostel, or Air BnB. People's information was likely taken by connecting to what the identity thieves thought was secure, but free WiFi, usually in hotels, airports, and cafes. It's likely the thieves joined the same network and started dumping the network data packets until they gathered all the sensitive information they needed.
Identity theft could follow you for many years down the road. People could use this information to take out lines of credit in your name, destroying your credit score and potentially leaving you with the bill.
In today’s interconnected world, it’s important to manage your digital footprint while traveling abroad. With soaring numbers of people becoming "at risk" as they rely on handy smartphones and other devices to make travel easier and more fun, the issue of privacy looms large. In fact, it is probably larger than anyone can ever know. Effective measures to manage this exposure may be to use a virtual private network (VPN) to encrypt your Internet connection, so that bad actors such as the hacker community can't access or read your data. This approach is especially important when one uses public Wi-Fi networks in airports or cafes. Also, be mindful of what information you post on your social media accounts. It might be a good rule to only "check-in" or "post a pic" of your location after you have rebased to another (safe) location. Posting travel updates or photos is a fun part of the travel experience, but perhaps edit your privacy settings so that only close friends and family may see these. There will probably be the guests who should never see your "real-time location" data, as there may be unwanted guests (or gate crashers).