You’re Leaving Footprints

TROPE: Teachers’ Resources for Online Privacy Educationwww.teachingprivacy.org 1

Overview

Principle: Your information footprint is larger than you think.

• Your information footprint consists of much more than just the information you intentionally share online.

• What else can contribute to your information footprint?

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Sharing Information Daily

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Recording Your Tracks• Every time you visit a website or app, you leave a

trace!

• Many websites, apps, and other services store the data they collect about users.

• What kind of data can websites, apps, and other services collect from your activities and posts?

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Hidden InformationMetadata: “Data about data” – additional information that apps and devices exchange along with content, often without the user’s knowledge.

• What are some places you find metadata?

• What kind of information is in it?

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It’s Not Just You(and It’s Not Just Your Devices)

• Can other people contribute to your information footprint?

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• Posts and photo tags;

• Incidental recordings;

• Business records;

• Public records;

• Any kind of records!

Making Inferences• All of this data – the information you intentionally

share, the information shared by others, and the metadata attached to these – can be combined to infer even more information about you!

• Who would want such a portrait of you?

• What could they infer from your data?

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Inferences: What Could Go Wrong?• What could happen if a criminal discovered…

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A tweet saying you’re on vacation?

Your name in your Twitter profile?

A public record that has your name linked with your home address?

All of the above?

• Check the privacy settings on your mobile apps, computer software, and online accounts regularly.

• Turn off settings that share information, such as your location or contacts, that is unnecessary for the service.

• “Opt out” of companies and services sharing your information with third parties.

That’s a Lot of Data! What Can I Do?

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For More Information...Visit Us on the Web!

www.teachingprivacy.org

Thanks to...TROPE: Teachers’ Resources for Online Privacy Education is supported by a

grant from the National Science Foundation (DGE-1419319).Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations are those of the originators and do not necessarily

reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Licensed by the International Computer Science Institute under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC-BY)

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