Protecting Your Online Identity What is digital reputation? - Defined by online behaviors and content Examples: Tagged photos Blog & social media posts Your digital reputation is defined by your behaviors in the online environment and by the content that you post about yourself and others. Tagged photos, blog post and social networking interactions will all shape how you are perceived by others online and offline, now and in the future.

Protecting Your Online Identity Why digital reputation matters. Affects both personal and professional relationships. Examples: 78% corporate recruiters & 63% of college admission officers reported using social media to review prospects. A poor digital reputation can affect your friendships, relationships and even your job or college prospects. A survey conducted by CyberSafetyCop.com reported that 78% of corporate recruiters and 63% of college admission officers reported checking social media accounts of prospects.

Protecting Your Online Identity Protecting your online reputation from: Yourself Remove old or embarrassing accounts Review potentially breached accounts A major part in protecting your online reputation is ensuring that you are protecting yourself from yourself. With practically every service imaginable available on the web today, people are inclined to create accounts on a whim to access these services. Often times these accounts become unused and forgotten about. Unfortunately, these accounts do not go away once forgotten about, thus creating a large exposure vector. The first step in cleaning up an online identity is identifying all those old unused accounts and either deactivating them, or removing any personal identifying information such as: name, address, phone number, photos, etc. Fortunately, there is a service that will assist with this process a website called justdelete.me aggregates links and instructions for deleting accounts from many population web services. Another important step for ensuring the safety of your online identity is reviewing if any of your old or even current accounts have been exposed in any hacks or database breaches. Again, there is a useful service that will make this process simple. The webpage (https://haveibeenpwned.com/) Have I Been Pwned allows you to search for your email address or username to see if it has been affected by any such breaches.

Protecting Your Online Identity Protecting your online reputation from: Others (doxing) Protect your accounts Protect your information Protect your devices “Doxing is the act of publishing someone’s personal information, of which there would be a reasonable expectation of privacy and dubious value to the conversation, in an environment that implies or encourages intimidation or threat.” In essence, doxing and online harassment are generally not mutually exclusive – if a person is doxed, it is reasonable to assume they will / are being harassed.

Protecting Your Online Identity Responding to doxing / harassment: Document all harassment Report threats to local authorities Report harassment to the webpage abuse team. Seek help ISU abuse (abuse@ilstu.edu) Online resources Before you do anything, remember that documenting your doxing is of the utmost priority. Things like screenshots, downloading the webpage and other methods of record-keeping, preferably with things like timestamps and URLs visible, are crucial for both your own reference and for any third parties who may have an interest in your case. Not only does it create a chain of culpability, but the site of your doxing and surrounding threats can make it much easier to secure police or legal involvement should the harassment escalate. This doesn’t mean you should leave your dox up if you can help it. Once it’s documented, sites like Pastebin, which are often used to share doxed information, have procedures in place (http://pastebin.com/contact) for removing private information. Many social media sites have processes in place to assist victims of online harassment in removing the offending content. For example CyberCivilRights.org offers tips and directions for removing sexually explicit material of an individual that has been publicly exposed. Of course, these processes will apply to all types of harassment, not just those specifically outline in the text. http://www.cybercivilrights.org/online-removal/

Protecting Your Online Identity Useful links for reference: http://justdelete.me/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ http://www.cybercivilrights.org/online-removal/ https://www.crashoverridenetwork.com/index.html https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/online-privacy/social-networking.aspx

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