You definitely would love the idea of tracking your activities on the internet, to view your data over time.

While this may seem like a “Social Media topic”, it is however not limited to it alone. Your digital footprint includes trails and traces of all your online activities within the internet. These activities can be derived when making purchases from e-commerce websites, signing up for coupons or creating an account, downloading and using

shopping apps, registering for brand awareness etc. And the reality of things is that, though these footprints are created by you, it is visible to anyone on the internet not just your family, friend or classmate, but potential employers, school authorities, government and hackers too.

Your digital Footprint is visible to anyone on the internet not just your family, friend or classmate, but potential employers, school authorities, government and hackers.

For further details about internet footprints, you can visit Internet Footprints… how it affects you.

This brings the big question: How can I Track my actions/activities on the internet?

While we go hunting, we will definitely not take the “CSI route” though… okay, maybe use a bit of the “spy approach”.

Oh yes, if you are ready to see how much information about you is on the internet, you would like to assume the spy mantle for a few minutes and get to know their ways and how they do what they do. They search and surf the internet for details and use some tools to fast-track their process.

Anyways, these steps are pretty much obvious and data is “sometimes” hidden in plain sight.

1. Firstly, you will need to Google Yourself.

Try this simple step, visit google.com and enter your name then hit the “search” button and wait for the results, Image, news results and any other area, website or post for which you were either mentioned, tagged or called out including your own personal posts. This result often comes with a direct link to your social media profile (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) or even revealing your email address.

You would need to try this out before we proceed…

1. Use Search websites.

Most recruiters do not need to ask numerous questions to validate your information. They use the services of a Search engine or search website to verify all they need. Now we have decided to discuss this, try searching for your internet data on Peekyou.com, you will be shocked at what can be seen about you completely void of a geographical gap.

Other sites to try to include Spokeo.com, saymine.com and Radaris.com.

1. Use Open Source Intelligence Framework (OSINT FRAMEWORK).

For a more advanced search, you could try the OSINT FRAMEWORK, here you can get links to websites where you can get detailed information about you including your email, IP address, social networks, people search engines, instant messaging, phone numbers etc.

How to Manage your Footprints.

1. Don’t Overshare.

This tip never gets old! No matter the case, site or desire; be conscious of what you share and the information you let out.

This can be as a random post on social media, a comment on a trendy post, a release of contact information requested by a site or user etc.

1. Deactivate Old “Forgotten” accounts.

“Take away the trash” there is a reason why we do not store them; the reason being that they can be toxic if left unattended. In this case, check for that old Amazon account, or the Facebook account you created when you were 12 years old and delete it.

Asides from the complexities of having dual identities online, it also prevents your identity from being used to scam or mislead people.

1. Carefully Monitor your linked accounts.

The most popular is linking your Facebook account to a new site, maybe to save you the stress of signing up again; so you use the easy route of “sign in with your Facebook”. Doing this though quickly in sign-up, automatically links your Social account to the new site and at that moment, you will not realize the enormous data you have let out.

Instead of linking your accounts, why not use a secondary email address for new and “strange sites”?

1. Google Alerts.

Activating google alerts notifies you when words or phrases related to you reflect on the internet.

These are only a few ways how to track and manage your digital footprints, further research will reveal more details. However, While you can try out these sites, remember the internet is ever dynamic and always one step ahead; meaning you can never be too sure of your actions.

The best closing tip I would proffer at this point is: Be mindful of what you let out, and where you respond and generally always cross-check your actions on the internet before you use the “send button”.