Our friends over at Strumerika.com, OK friend over at Strumerika.com who goes by the name Erika Strum, sent me an article yesterday from the Washington Post that told the story of female law school students who were unable to find employment due to unwilling objectification online. Several women were presented in a negative manner on locations throughout the web that would-be employers were accessing via Google and other search engines while performing research on interviewees.
This brings to light the important question of how do we protect our identity on the internet? In the past we only had to worry about what we ourselves were publishing about ourselves. Often times we would be posting information under a handle other than our own name, so it was basically impossible for someone to identify you unless they knew you offline.
Protecting our identity today is a completely different ballgame. With the emergence of social networking not only are more people coming online, but more people are posting personal information and sharing it with whoever wants to see. Although the benefits of social networking are great, there are some very important privacy considerations. It’s easy to control what we write about ourselves online, but what about what other people write and post about us?
There are two easy things you can do to protect your self-integrity on the internet. First, don’t reveal everything about your life to complete strangers. All of the most popular social networking sites, MySpace, Facebook, etc. have extensive privacy features. When fully utilized these features can lock your personal information down pretty tight, allowing only people you know to see what you have posted about yourself. Use these features, and don’t let anyone you don’t know offline or anyone who you have problems with see it.
Second, sign up for ClaimID and exert some control of what people searching for your name will find. ClaimID is a site where people make accounts and post links to information about them. It is essentially a digital clipboard, where you control what content gets put together for people seeking you out. The idea behind it is that you collect all the information you want others to see and post it as valid, and as your ClaimID has your name in it, it will always show up near the top of a search engine query for your name. Then, when a potential employere searches for you, they see your ClaimID with all the information that you have claimed is accurate about you, and they can ignore the rest.
One of the greatest things about having a claimID page is that you can easily provide people searching for you with a real picture of your identity. With claimID you can claim your blog, your website and news articles that mention your name into a central place. If someone is searching for you, they previously might not have found all of those important pages. With claimID, you can put your best face forward and let people see the identity you wish to present.
By utilizing both of the recommendations outlined above you will be able to exercise a bit more control over what gets said and shown about you online. They are by no means the end-all to securing your reputation online, but they are a start in the right direction. In the end it all comes down to being responsible about who you trust and what you feel comfortable sharing with others. Just be smart, if you are questioning something you are doing online, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.