One Mom's Journey

Before anyone knew what a digital footprint was, we all just posted, and status updated, and pinned,

and tagged to our hearts content. Later, we finally become educated and realize that everything, and

I mean EVERYTHING, that we have posted online will remain there, eternally. And this is searchable by

employers, future partners and your very own children.

Here are some ways to clean up that digital footprint and get ready for whatever the future holds.

#1 – Facebook Profile Settings

You will want to check your privacy settings and make sure that have your Facebook account is set to

friends only. Otherwise, anyone can see your timeline.



Although your timeline may be set to friends only, your posts are not. You will want to make sure you

set your privacy settings for your posts as well. You can do this by going into your privacy settings and

changing the settings on your “Who can see my stuff?” section.

You can also do editing of past posts through your activity log. It is tedious, but well worth it if you

want to hide those embarrassing late night posts, or childish love lust posts from your future audience.

Simply go to the drop down of each past post and change the privacy settings individually.

#2 Do a Personal Search – see where you stand – and do it Regularly

Use various search engines and search your name as weblinks and as images. If you cannot make any

changes yourself because someone else has posted them, reach out and ask that your friend remove

that embarrassing photo or tag. If you do not know how a photo of you has appeared on a social site,

you can reach out to the administrators of that site and kindly ask that they remove that as well.

#3 Review and Clean Up

This step is important. Many of us overlook the personal blogs or the long forgotten social sites. Make

this step the cleansing step. Go through your older blog posts and filter them of unprofessional content.

Find all your old abandoned social sites and delete them.


Keep in mind that the evolution of technology only suggests that we will be spending more and more

time online – which means you will want to remain clean. Take the above precautionary steps and think

before you post next and you will look like the angel that you are.