Digital FootPrint

Digital FootPrint

1. What is a Digital FootPrint?

   • Digital footprints are the records and traces we leave behind us as we use the internet
     • pro
       • Contribute to online reputation or you dont have to keep logging in or submitiing personal info to websites
     • con
       • Allows other to follow your actions
   • Organiztions
     • Social Media
       • By using it many have given up some control over their privacy
       • we’ve left a clear imprint at each of these individual services
     • Trailing
       • It's possible for someone to follow us around in the virtual world
         • usually for commercial purposes, but sometimes for other reasons - to track you, customize for you, and market to you

2. What did we start leaving such Big digital Footprints?

   • visits to different service providers generate data about you that piles up at each location
     • Service providers and other third parties exchange data about customer profiles and transaction statistics
   • Each time you visit a web site, you reveal some information about yourself to the owner of the web site
     • your IP address, which may include your geographic location, your web browser type and operating system, and, often, the last web site you visited
   • Each individual footprint is small, but when linked they can form a surprisingly complete profile about us causing BIG DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS

3. What is Economic Bargain for Internet Users?

   • publishers and marketers exploit digital footprints to target their products at the most appropriate audience.
     • some of that data is used directly to improve your experience, pieces of data build up into profiles of you and the other consumers who resemble you in some way.
   • Advertisers and marketers have grown dependent on the power digital footprints have given them to observe, link and mine data about Internet users
     • If you don't pay a subscription fee for a service or application, that service is funded by monetizing information about you, your social circle, and your collective interests and preferences
     • if you pay a subscription for a service, or a premium for an “adfree” version, it does not guarantee that your personal data is not collected and monetized
   • trade of your eyeballs for their servers, networks, and content is the essential economic bargain underlying most of the Internet
   • They create an overwhelming incentive to collect, mine, resell and monetize data about consumers, and power a commercial engine over which the individual consumer has little or no influence

4. Are Digital Footprints a problem?

   • undermines the social value of the Internet
   • implicit footprints we leave behind also can be used to track us, and to link information we have shared, in one context, into a larger and more complete profile that extends across the contextual boundaries of what we do online