Privacy Tips 1-6 (Nicola Osborne)

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From the course by The University of Edinburgh

Digital Footprint

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The University of Edinburgh

Digital Footprint

134 ratings

If I Googled you, what would I find? As we move around the online world we leave tracks and traces of our activity all the time: social media accounts, tagged images, professional presences, scraps of text, but also many artefacts we don't always realise we are leaving behind, or that others leave about us. In this course you will hear from a range of experts and you will have an opportunity to explore and reflect on your own online tracks and traces, to understand why your digital footprint is important. We will introduce you to some of the tools and approaches to effectively manage your online presence (or digital footprint). The course will focus on the different dimensions of a digital footprint, including developing an effective online presence, managing your privacy, creating opportunities for networking, balancing and managing professional and personal presences (eprofessionalism). By the end of this course (MOOC) you should be equipped to ensure that your digital footprint works for you, whether you want to be more private online, or are looking to create a more effective and impactful presence. You can also join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #DFMOOC and follow us @DFMOOC We hope you enjoy the course!

From the lesson

Why does your digital footprint matter?

This week, there is a range of experts who focus on why a digital footprint matters and how to create an effective online presence. The themes explored include data after death, privacy online and managing your online data. The activity and quizzes will help you to consider your own online presence and what you might do to make it more effective and work for you!

Privacy Tips 1-6 (Nicola Osborne)4:22

Privacy Tips 7-12 (Nicola Osborne)5:45

Audience online, time/longevity of data, visibility (Interview with David Brake)7:05

Audience (Interview with David Brake)3:13

Time (Interview with David Brake)7:05

Meet the Instructors

Louise Connelly
E-Learning Developer
University of Edinburgh
Nicola Osborne
Digital Education Manager
EDINA, University of Edinburgh

[MUSIC]

So you've been thinking about your digital footprint, and

you want to make some changes.

What are the practical steps you can do to change your privacy, and

your privacy settings and things.

I've got twelve tips, I'm going to run through them quite quickly.

But you can have a look at some of the resources around this unit, and

then you'll get some chance to dig in, in more detail.

So, tip number one.

Don't post anything stupid.

Now I realize that's a really very obvious.

But if you don't put stuff out there in the first place,

it's a lot easier to manage it.

So, if you do post something that you didn't mean to or

something silly is out there already, you can also delete things.

And don't be afraid to delete things, we all make mistakes.

But you'll have to be fine about deleting them or taking them down occasionally.

Tip number two, check your privacy settings.

Boring, but essential.

Pre-settings are quite powerful.

They will let you control all kinds of usage of your data.

They'll let you control who can tag you in images, who can tag you in posts,

that kind of thing.

Check them regularly and make sure you're happy with them.

And you can also check the settings on individual posts in some platforms, too.

So on Facebook for instance, you can choose which group you share with.

Check your settings there as well.

Okay tip number three, don't freak out, just general don't panic really.

But particularly don't freak out if someone posts something that is a little

bit dubious, so a late night post, maybe someone shared a dodgy picture,

maybe your friends are a bit unreliable in what they tagged you in.

Don't freak out about it.

You can take things down.

You can request things be taken down.

You can deal with it in lots of different ways.

But actually, the risk of things going horribly awry, and

that's lasting as a major issue on your digital footprint, the odds are it won't.

The odds are it'll be quite ephemeral and go past.

So, that's a good catch-all.

Don't panic.

It is useful to remember whenever you're doing that stuff.

Tip number four is that if there is bad stuff out there,

crowd it out with much better stuff.

So if you're trying to build up any kind of digital footprint, or

if you have a digital footprint already,

you just need to make sure that it's what you want it to be.

So crowd out anything that might be bad, or out of date, or not what you want it to

be with the stuff that is good, that you intend to be, that is within your control,

that looks like the you that you want to present to the world.

So tip number five, you can also do some more things about getting rid

of that bad content by doing some untagging.

By asking people to take things down,

by having all good conversations with friends.

If there is stuff that you want to make sure is less easily associated with you or

that shouldn't be up there and

shouldn't be attached to your name, then take some action on it.

You can untag things individually,

you can ask friends to not do it again in the future.

Again, it's part of that crowding out the bad stuff and

making sure there's less bad stuff to start with.

So, where are we?

Tip number six, troll avoidance.

Easier said than done, to be fair.

But, you can avoid trolls by just not getting into what

looks like it's going to be a bit of a chaotic exchange.

You will see when people reply to you sometimes that they are just trying to

wind you up, and my top tip really is to not rise to that.

If you can ignore it and walk away, brilliant.

If you can't ignore it, and you think that person is really upsetting you by posting

stuff, you can block them, you can report them.

There's different levels at which you can do those things.

But one of the easiest thing to do is to just not, when you see something that you

know you shouldn't be responding to, don't respond to it.

Or step away for

a few minutes to make sure you're doing it in a sensible way that can't escalate.

People sometimes just want to trouble and you're best just keeping out of it.

[MUSIC]

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