Learn Easy Steps: Your Digital Footprint

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Clarity Innovations

Learn: Easy Steps

Activity Card: Your Digital Footprint

Are you wondering what happens to the information you share online? Are you worried about posting details about yourself on the Internet? Would you like to know how to better share your personal information? Making sure you understand how your data is stored, shared, and found online is an important part of protecting yourself online. Your digital footprint, or the trail of data left behind by users on digital devices, and how it is maintained is an important aspect of your online safety. This trail of data not only builds an online reputation, but will follow you into the future and even into your offline life.

How to Understand Your Digital Footprint

While browsing the web (Passive User Footprint)

Cookies and Browsing History

  1. Browsing History: You can clear your browser’s History or manage settings to customize when or how long your browser retains your History.
  2. Cookies: Cookies are small files, consisting of letters and numbers, placed on your computer, tablet, phone, or similar device, when you use that device to visit a web site. Cookies are widely used by web site owners to make their web sites operate, work more efficiently, and provide analytic information (Intel). You can turn Cookies off in your browser’s Preferences.

While adding content to the web (Active User Footprint)

Cookies and Browsing History

  1. Community Member: As members of any community, we should be conscious of how we present ourselves in public arenas, including the Internet. Even though it is possible to delete content from online profiles, or cancel an account altogether, the data was shared and could be saved by other users or by the entity or service being accessed.
  2. Sharing: Sharing our lives in images, videos, and text online is an exciting part of living in the age of the Internet. As active online users, being aware of what is happening to the information you share is an important step in managing your digital footprint. Being informed about the tools available will help you share the content you want others to see, but at the same time keep what is private away from those who might misuse it.
  3. Staying Informed: Read, or be aware of, a web site’s or service’s Privacy Policy. The fact that a web site even has a Privacy Policy should alert you to the fact that you are interacting with a service that is managing YOUR information, data, and content. Generally, once you share, your content is no longer your own.

How to manage your digital footprint (Recap)

  1. Changing Your Computer’s Settings (Cookies and Browser History). You can clear your browser’s History or manage settings to your preference.
  2. Leaving a Trail Online with Cookies. You can turn Cookies off in your browser’s preferences.
  3. Add Extra Measures of Management

There are services (for example, Disconnect) which can be added on to your browser and can help prevent sharing even more of your data/information.

Activity

Each time we interact with computers on the Internet, we leave behind data. Sometimes this digital footprint is helpful. Our browser history allows us to easily find web sites we have visited previously, and web site cookies can help make our online experiences more personal. Knowing how to monitor and erase this footprint, however, is important to keeping your information safe online, especially if you interact with public computers and networks. Follow the steps below, to practice viewing and deleting your browser history and cookies.

  1. Open the Internet browser you use most often (for example, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari).
  2. Find your browsing history.
  3. If you use your history to revisit websites, look through what information is recorded here. If you are using a public computer or would like to delete this information, try "clearing" this history.
  4. Locate the option for deleting cookies in your browser and "clear" them.
  5. Explore the other privacy options available on your browser, and remove data or update your preferences as you like.

Sources and Additional Information

Terms of Use and License

Terms of Use

These resources provided by Intel are 'open' and are available for educational use. Many hold Creative Commons licenses that allow them to be repurposed, modified and adapted for a diverse array of local contexts.

Each resource has one of three conditions of use labels. These at-a-glance labels can help you quickly distinguish whether a resource can be changed or shared without further permission required. In addition, you can find the specific license or terms of permitted use for each resource.

  1. Remix and Share Your remixing, redistributing, or making derivatives works comes with some restrictions, including how it is shared. Includes Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA), Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA), Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC), GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL);
  2. Share Only Your redistributing comes with some restrictions. Do not remix or make derivative works. Includes Creative Commons No Derivatives (CC ND).
  3. Read the Fine Print Everything else. All Rights Reserved. US-based educators have certain permissions under Fair Use and the TEACH Act. Includes educational and personal uses of copyrighted materials, custom licenses and terms, permission to print only, unknown restrictions, and any other redistribution restrictions of the DMCA and of your own country.

License

All Intel Content is protected under U.S. and international copyrights. Intel owns and retains all rights, title and interest, including all rights under copyright, in and to all Intel Content. Your rights to use, share and adapt Intel Content under the Creative Commons (“CC”) License are merely those of a non-exclusive licensee, and you do not acquire copyright ownership with respect to any Intel Content.

Except as expressly otherwise noted, all Intel Content (including Intel Curriculum Material) is made available to Users in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), as amended and updated by Creative Commons from time to time (the “CC BY-NC License”), which is incorporated herein by this reference.

The CC BY-NC License allows you to freely share and adapt Intel Content, provided that:

  1. You give proper attribution to Intel in the manner specified by Intel, but not in any way that suggests that Intel endorse you or your use;
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  4. You comply with all other requirements as may be specified in the CC BY-NC License. The CC BY-NC license supersedes and replaces any Creative Commons license previously adopted by Intel for Intel Content. 

NOTE: Notwithstanding the above, the CC BY-NC License does not apply to photos, images and other materials contained in Intel Content which have been licensed by Intel from Shutterstock.com and/or other commercial stock photo/image agencies (you can easily identify such a photo or image by looking at the credit embedded within or associated with the photo or image) (each, a “Licensed Stock Photo”). You are allowed to retain a copy of a Licensed Stock Photo for your own personal, non-commercial use only, BUT (i) you may not modify, alter, adapt, or otherwise create any derivative work from a Licensed Stock Photo and (ii) you may not distribute, transmit or disseminate a Licensed Stock Photo or any copy or derivative work thereof, to any third party, whether by itself, as part of Intel Content, as part of your Curriculum Contributions, or otherwise.

If you wish to use Intel Content for commercial purposes, you must contact Intel to enter into a separate license agreement governing commercial use of Intel Content.

If you do not agree to the terms of the CC BY-NC License, please refrain from using Intel Content in any manner, including downloading, copying, reproducing, printing, editing, modifying, distributing or transmitting such content, in any media or by any means, whether now known or hereafter developed. If you accept the terms of the CC BY-NC License and proceed to use any Intel Content, then any breach or violation by you of the CC BY-NC License will automatically constitute a violation of the TOU and may subject you to liability to Intel for copyright infringement. Also, to the extent you have violated the CC BY-NC License and made modifications or improvements to, or have prepared derivative works based upon, Intel Content or have otherwise incorporated Intel Content into your own content for commercial purposes, your violation of the CC BY-NC License will automatically subject such modifications, improvements or derivative works by you, or your own content that is mixed with Intel Content, to a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide license to Intel, and Intel may, in its sole discretion, elect to exercise the foregoing license in addition to or without prejudice to any other remedies available.

2018                        Based on materials originally developed by IntelⓇ Corporation                


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