It could not even be you.
Many of us have posted on social media about birthdays, anniversaries, pet names, favorite places, where we live, spouse, kids, parent’s names and the list goes on.
I’ve posted pictures of our pets including their names and our anniversary date. As I alluded to in my previous post, if you are still using variations of these as your passwords for any of your online accounts, you have just shared your password with a large number of people, most of whom you think are your family, friends and acquaintances.
However, when your “Friends” or “Connections” list grows and those “Followers” become people you have never met in person and only online, you really have no idea who these people are. This is especially true when you open yourself up to public posting on social media, blogs and other websites and apps. The platform you’re posting on also makes a difference. If it’s LinkedIn or a business website or blog, the expectation is professional related content. If it’s Facebook, Instagram or a personal blog, the posted content opens up wide.
While some may have different views of their digital footprint, they also may not have a family, a career, a house and other treasures to protect that have taken much a lifetime to build. Digital footprints are meaningless now – by kate lindsay (substack.com)
Don’t be disillusioned that nobody searches for your (or your spouse, ex, kids) publicly posted information. Your employees, colleagues, employer, prospective employer, customers, clients, patients, teammates, neighbors, acquaintances and complete strangers search to find out more about you. While YouTube is the most frequently searched, Facebook comes in a resounding second. A commenter on a recent Nextdoor thread admitted to looking up the person who posted the thread on Facebook…to find out more about them.
Do you even know what your public Facebook profile looks like? Go to your profile view (click/tap on your profile picture), look for the three dots on the right-hand side to open up the menu shown in the picture, then click/tap on View As. Whatever is posted on this view can be seen by the entire 3 billion active monthly users on Facebook including the millions of fake/cloned profiles Facebook removes each quarter. I didn’t until I figured it out and have curated this view to my sharing preference and to prove that I’m not an online ghost but genuinely human. How your digital footprint can impact your career and reputation (theceomagazine.com)
What you post online is your decision as we all have different circumstances and preferences. However, the source links below should give you pause to think about the impact of how and what you are posting not only to you but also for those in your family whether it be a short- or long-term effect.
This article was posted last week in my LinkedIn feed by one of first people I met when moving to California. She helped me consider and accept a job in a completely different industry that has paid me dividends beyond monetary to the many great people I met and worked with over the years. Ameri was a recruiting director with Robert Half and is now a SVP, a trusted and respected source. 6 Behaviors That Damage Your Influence at Work | Robert Half
My husband and I use Keeper, a trusted source: How Oversharing on Social Media Affects Your Privacy – Keeper (keepersecurity.com)
Additional sources:
Why Parents Overshare on Social Media And When It Might Be Dangerous
Stop Oversharing: How to Make Your Social Profiles Private | PCMag