My Digital FootPrint

I have written a number of times on dealing with death and the relationship to your digital footprint Rule 31 from my 31 new social rules for living in a digital age is about finding someone you trust to ensure that your digital estate can be managed.  Digital Estate Planning appears to be growing    AssetLock.net ,  Legacy Locker ,  Deathswitch.com  and My Webwill   aim to address the issues raised  by enabling online users to securely store online information like logins and passwords to be passed on to relations after death - however you need to tell someone and  Excel does work as a cheap alternative. On a related but different slant there is E-Tomb which is a solar powered tomb with bluetooth to enable relatives to visit your online profiles and memories after you passed away.

They have built an easy way to quickly download to your computer everything you've ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information.  If you want a copy of the information you've put on Facebook for any reason, you can click a link and easily get a copy of all of it in a single download. To protect your information, this feature is only available after confirming your password and answering appropriate security questions. We'll begin rolling out this feature to people later today, and you'll find it under your  account settings . There is a video on Mark Zuckerberg blog http://www.facebook.com/blog.php?post=434691727130

    Some interesting correspondence following yesterdays post about "Being a professional and having social anonymity is a crime" These images are my response to "How to 'hang' yourself in public and why we should hide" You can do it your self (or with the aid of some enemies) You can present your achievements in a public place You can do something stupid You can misunderstand the term Within the context of a digital footprint why is this important.   Digital footprints are about what you say about yourself and what others say about you. You can control what you say about your self You probably are unaware of what data you have provided about yourself and to who and who they will use it You don't control what others say about you (unless they break the law) You have no idea what data there is out there that links to you from your network   Given this, behave like a professional and you will probably have a digital footprint to be proud of which describes

    Some interesting correspondence following yesterdays post about "Being a professional and having social anonymity is a crime" These images are my response to "How to 'hang' yourself in public and why we should hide" You can do it your self (or with the aid of some enemies) You can present your achievements in a public place You can do something stupid You can misunderstand the term Within the context of a digital footprint why is this important.   Digital footprints are about what you say about yourself and what others say about you. You can control what you say about your self You probably are unaware of what data you have provided about yourself and to who and who they will use it You don't control what others say about you (unless they break the law) You have no idea what data there is out there that links to you from your network   Given this, behave like a professional and you will probably have a digital footprint to be proud of which describes

    Some interesting correspondence following yesterdays post about "Being a professional and having social anonymity is a crime" These images are my response to "How to 'hang' yourself in public and why we should hide" You can do it your self (or with the aid of some enemies) You can present your achievements in a public place You can do something stupid You can misunderstand the term Within the context of a digital footprint why is this important.   Digital footprints are about what you say about yourself and what others say about you. You can control what you say about your self You probably are unaware of what data you have provided about yourself and to who and who they will use it You don't control what others say about you (unless they break the law) You have no idea what data there is out there that links to you from your network   Given this, behave like a professional and you will probably have a digital footprint to be proud of which describes

  Why print with never die by a digital evangelist. And the reason is that, as of today, it is just too difficult to manage your data.  Two things have recently co-joined to make me think this.   Over the summer I purchased the Epson 650 scanner (awesome bit of kit) so that my daughters could scan old photo’s so that they could load images up to Facebook.  They got very board very quickly and I am left with about 5,000 pictures to do and I have become very selective about what I am now scanning. They also discovered that it is quicker to take a picture on their iphone of the desired picture and side load it.  Who says that they don’t get IT.   Over the weekend, whilst in the attic, I found my old Samsung Super 8mm camcorder.  After a quick clean of the battery terminals (note to self, again, don’t store anything with batteries) the machine pinged into life and we (family plus grandparents) spend Sunday laughing like man people at the poor camera work, our fabulous sense of fashion and

This is a site to help you "delete your account"  - however this does not delete your data or your digital footprint..... http://deleteyouraccount.com/ This site provides a guide to resetting some factory defaults on your mobile before you recycle it - again take care, deep techies can still recover some of the data, but mr joe public will not be able to. http://www.hardresetguide.com/

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/technology/18death.html This is a difficult topic, how do we deal with accounts of users who die.  Who’s owns their IPR, should you login and delete the account.  I have written serval times about legacy and death, but as I am writing some ‘new’ social rules for our digital age and this one is very hard and any ideas would be welcome.  

  Changing name may be only way to escape previous online activity reports Carrie-Ann Skinner of PC Advisor “Young web users may be need to change their names when they become adults in a bid to distance themselves from content previously posted online about them” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things." Schmidt also told the newspaper the search engine is "trying to figure out what the future of search is". "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type." He says that at present "we know roughly who you are,

  Changing name may be only way to escape previous online activity reports Carrie-Ann Skinner of PC Advisor “Young web users may be need to change their names when they become adults in a bid to distance themselves from content previously posted online about them” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things." Schmidt also told the newspaper the search engine is "trying to figure out what the future of search is". "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type." He says that at present "we know roughly who you are,

  Changing name may be only way to escape previous online activity reports Carrie-Ann Skinner of PC Advisor “Young web users may be need to change their names when they become adults in a bid to distance themselves from content previously posted online about them” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things." Schmidt also told the newspaper the search engine is "trying to figure out what the future of search is". "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type." He says that at present "we know roughly who you are,

  Changing name may be only way to escape previous online activity reports Carrie-Ann Skinner of PC Advisor “Young web users may be need to change their names when they become adults in a bid to distance themselves from content previously posted online about them” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things." Schmidt also told the newspaper the search engine is "trying to figure out what the future of search is". "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type." He says that at present "we know roughly who you are,

From: Sean Dockray A roadmap for an effective Facebook suicide should do some of the following: catching as many viruses as possible; click on as many ?Like? buttons as possible; join as many groups as possible; request as many friends as possible. Wherever there is the possibility for action, take it, and take it without any thought whatsoever. Become a machine for clicking! Every click dissolves the virtual double that Facebook has created for you. It disperses you into the digital lives of others you hadn?t thought of communicating with. It confuses your friends. It pulls all those parts of the world that your social network refuses to engage with back into focus, makes it present again. Other alternatives:- - stick to facebook and provide rubbish data. “database vandalism!” - "fakebook" where you do not use your real name and fill your profile with nonsense information.

So you have got yourself into a digital mess. Pictures that are not fitting for the new image, blog posts that are not so in thinking with the new role, friends who are just links and you need it all cleaned up.  Alas life coaches and other ‘social engineers’ are re-branding and emerging with a promise that they will come and save you.  The guarantee is that they will clean it all up and start again….  Please don’t fall for anyone who promises to clean up your digital past.   Just a quick change of name, a new profile or a new privacy setting is not the answer, neither is deleting, re-starting, clearing cookies or buying a new computer as this is only the data that is in your control.  The content you need to think about is what others have said about you, not what you say about yourself.

Thinking further about the Greenpeace cloud paper  where their emphasis is on the type of electricity production that powers the cloud. In my view they should open up another attack angle that will have a different effect.  They rightfully acknowledge that efficiency gains from technology advancement will reduce energy requirement but I don't think they look at what is possible with a bit of old fashion price/demand theory. I agree that one prime focus of attack should be the move to sustainable energy and away from coal/gas, however, I would argue that an equally important focus should be on straight forward reduction.  But how do you encourage less use of a free cloud service.  Every new consumer of cloud applications or new user adds new demands for computing, storage and power, every active existing user also increases demands and all in-active users, have an energy consumption that remains a constant bleed on the system.  The area where I think there is some thought

Although we produce and author digital content, we do not seem to have complete ownership of it and this problem of lack of ownership occurs at several points when we want to, or someone else needs to, gain access or control over it, these being abuse, historic and death. Abuse – when our information/ ID is stolen or taken out of context History – it doesn’t become history, it remains current but we need it to fade and become less relevant (prevalent) Death – gaining control to be able to switch off and archive.

Tending to Your Digital Remains is a dead interesting post on a topic I have asked the same question about – what happens when you die. First you need to make sure you hand on the keys (passwords) At least three companies — AssetLock.net , Legacy Locker , and the charmingly named Deathswitch.com — have arisen to keep customers’ passwords, usernames, final messages, and so on in a virtual safe-deposit box. After you’re gone, these companies carry out last wishes, alert friends, give account access to various designated beneficiaries, and generally parse out and pass on your online assets. Digital remains that are not bequeathed to an inheritor are incinerated, closing the book on PayPal accounts, profiles, even alternate identities ( especially alternate identities: You don’t want your mother knowing about, or worse, playing, the wife-swapping giant badger you became in Second Life). A second post on the same topic is Logging out after snuffing out  - which is much more about what

Tending to Your Digital Remains is a dead interesting post on a topic I have asked the same question about – what happens when you die. First you need to make sure you hand on the keys (passwords) At least three companies — AssetLock.net , Legacy Locker , and the charmingly named Deathswitch.com — have arisen to keep customers’ passwords, usernames, final messages, and so on in a virtual safe-deposit box. After you’re gone, these companies carry out last wishes, alert friends, give account access to various designated beneficiaries, and generally parse out and pass on your online assets. Digital remains that are not bequeathed to an inheritor are incinerated, closing the book on PayPal accounts, profiles, even alternate identities ( especially alternate identities: You don’t want your mother knowing about, or worse, playing, the wife-swapping giant badger you became in Second Life). A second post on the same topic is Logging out after snuffing out  - which is much more about what