locking down my digital identity

I was just generally thinking about my digital identity and I am going to admit I have kind of always thought ‘what does it matter.’ An attitude of, ‘who would really care about my identity and look that deep into my different profiles.’ As I am growing up I am realizing that it is a real issue and that I need to be more careful about what I am posting and the information out there about me. It is not only protecting me but it is protecting my family and eventually my future children. I know people who rarely post their children on social media and I see why. I decided to go through the steps of FemTechNet’s “locking down your digital identity” because I want to start putting into practice these safety measures in case of harrasement, stalking, trafficking etc.

1. set up two factor authentification — this ensures that no one but yourself can get into the website or account. Fortunately, some of the accounts I use already have this feature. It is a little bit of a pain but a good feature.
2. Use a password Manager — I did not do this one because I have such trouble remembering my passwords as it is. What I did do was, disable the feature that remembers your passwords to create more security.
3. Lock down all old facebook posts — This wasn't too bad to do because I hardly have anything on facebook anyways. I also don’t have a lot of personal information, like birthday or relationship status on my page.
4. Check the internet for old information — The websites did not work for this one but I did a simple google search and tried to clean up things.
5. Delete Old Accounts — I do this reguarly. I have gotten rid of my twitter and tik tok so when I do that I completely delete them.

This exercise really made me think about my presence online and how that can affect me. I think that these simply steps are great to do every so often to ensure security.