by Juliet Bathory
Welcome to the age of virtual immortality! Fill in your details, click the ‘I accept the Terms and Conditions’ box without reading the document, hit ‘Sign me up!’ and you are on your way to creating your digital legacy – warts and all.
That’s right, all those naughty pictures you share behind your partner’s back, all those bitchy comments left for faceless people on forums, all those embarrassing status updates will be preserved by the countless parent companies and subsidiaries of the website you just signed up to without reading the Terms and Conditions. But there’s nothing to worry about right? After all, nobody thinks about their digital legacy when they are posting away on Twitter, or writing that blog post about your crap job. That is, of course, until it’s time to apply for a new one…
Are you concerned about what an employer could find out about you?
If you knew how deep they could dig, would you change your online behaviour?
What would it take for you to consciously think about your digital legacy before you hit the submit/publish/post button?
Let’s hear your comments.
editor
May 6th, 2010
I have to say, I find this idea of a digital legacy, or digital footprints very interesting. I’m personally quite careful about how I can be found online, but with a lot of sites encouraging interconnectivity and linking up, I think people are quickly becoming complacent about that.
As for employers looking you up on Facebook, well I suppose that is the quickest way to get a true idea of someone’s personality – but at the same time, is that “Facebook personality” really any of their business? Lots of people have completely seperate work identities, and it seems contrary somehow that social networking is forcing things that were previously seperate to come together.
Just some rambling thoughts :) Good piece!