Simply put, a digital footprint is a record or trail left by the things you do online. Your social media activity, the info on your personal website, your browsing history, your online subscriptions, any photo galleries and videos you’ve uploaded — essentially, anything on the Internet with your name on it.

Begin with your online activity

     The first step you need to take when you want to clean up your online footprints is to assess what you've already done.  What do you think you're about to do? You're about to click on a link from one of your many social media sites. That webpage will take you to an online store. That video or photo will load up in the Chrome web browser. That tab in your browser will have a logo from your online banking account in it.  The same thing will happen with any other site you've visited. The details of that activity are there, and they're growing. It's important to take a moment to think about what you're doing before you do it, and to have some level of privacy setting enabled so that only people you choose can access your information.

Control what others can find about you

     The main reason to keep your digital footprint limited is so others can’t make life difficult for you later on. If your name has been tied to something people don’t like, that could negatively affect your professional or personal life.  Digital footprint management can help you remove any negative allegations from your professional or personal life before they become public. For example, perhaps someone else reported that you plagiarized a report on a previous job, and that report shows up in a Google search. It doesn’t matter what the accusation is — if your digital footprint has it in there, it can hurt your reputation.  Take measures to control what others can find out about you.

Protect your privacy

     You could go whole-hog and protect your entire digital footprint, locking down your entire online persona from birth to death. That’s great, but maybe you’re a professional in a field where privacy is a thing of the past. Instead, choose your cyber footprint’s most valuable asset. Perhaps the most successful business owners are those who make the choice to have a small amount of their footprint visible. This still allows those who want to find their business online to easily do so, but it means less chance of criminals stumbling across personal info.

Control the information that appears on your personal website

     As a WordPress developer, a few steps are needed to understand how to use the content management system effectively.  The first step is to register a domain name for your site. To be more specific, create a username and password and then set your newly registered domain name to the text you choose:  “example.com”  As a WordPress developer, here’s what I mean by “registering a domain name”:  A domain name is a Web address like http://example.com or https://example.com.  Your domain name should be as unique as possible and contain numbers. (Choosing lower case letters is fine, but avoid abbreviations like “DSL” and “WPA”.)  Typically, your domain name is directly associated with your WordPress.com subdomain.  You’ll only need one domain name for your personal website.

Control what you share on social media,

     Your digital footprint. Is a pretty big deal. If you have a company’s name attached to your name, you’re going to be a little more visible than other people who are not the CEO. And you don’t want anyone from that company reaching out to you or posting inappropriate things about your personal life.  The best way to combat this is to set a blanket ban on any and all social media accounts you use at work. But even if you set up the account in a way that locks it from everything but direct family and/or friends, it’s still your responsibility to keep it locked.  You can be fired for a lot of things at work, but your digital footprint won’t be one of them.

Control who sees your online subscriptions

     "First" of all, it’s important to know who can see what. Internet service providers (ISPs), for example, can see who you are visiting and who you have paid for that service, and therefore your ISP has a history of every website you’ve visited in the past. An ISP can also see the sites you have added to your Netflix watch list.  Many ISPs offer parental control features, which can be great — but it doesn’t stop there. Your ISPs also own a copy of every photo you’ve uploaded to your Instagram account, every app you’ve downloaded, every map you’ve zoomed in and out of, and every item you’ve pinned to Pinterest.

Control how you appear in photo galleries and videos

     Step one of shaping your digital footprint is to control what information you expose on the Internet. Is there anything in your online accounts you’d rather not have others see? Or do you find yourself unable to control how other people manage to access information about you?  Perhaps your Facebook account is open to others; for example, friends and family of friends are free to see your profiles, photos, and posts. Or maybe you’re OK with strangers searching for you based on things you write on Twitter, such as your birthday, or by an email address you use for the site.  Either way, there are steps you can take to control the visibility of the information associated with your name. Start by checking your privacy settings on Facebook. Then go to Twitter, and do the same.