The Digital Student

Digital Footprint

It is important to consider your "digital footprint". 

Your digital footprint is about the traces you leave online. It includes everything on the internet that is about you, for example:

• profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn
• photographs that you or others have posted online
• anything that has been written about you, e.g. on discussion boards or blogs. (OU, 2020).

Future employers can now fully research you and your past by simply reviewing your online presence. 

Social media and your digital footprint

The following short video gives our guide to using social media safely to protect your digital footprint. 

Here is a short activity from the Open university that covers how to identify and develop your digital footprint.

Developing a good digital footprint activity

Developing a good digital footprint PDF

Digital and information literacy framework, Copyright © 2012 The Open University, http://www.open.ac.uk/libraryservices/subsites/dilframework/.   Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)