Blog #12: Final Blog Post

     After completing all of the blog post readings and participating in our class discussions, I can confidently say that my idea of technology has changed. I know find it to be a bit more invasive, and even though I think I am being safe and private online, you never have full control over who is accessing your personal information through these different forms of technology. 

How Large is My Online Footprint?

    I think that my online footprint is a normal size for my age, not too big but also not invisible either. I have social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Tik Tok, and LinkedIn. Instagram and Snapchat are platforms that I use for communicating with my friends, and I have more of a laid back online presence on these. Facebook is a place where I keep in touch with older friends and family, who don't have accounts like Instagram where all my friends are. LinkedIn is a place where I solely connect with potential employers. In my college career, I have had to create a blog in order to complete all of the assignments that are required of me. As you can tell, I have a lot of different accounts that are used for a lot of different things, but there is one thing that is similar between all these accounts, and that is that I have shared personal information on every single one of these platforms. Most of it I have done willingly and on my own accord, but by putting this information in I have unwillingly given personal information to strangers on the other side of my screen.

If You Visit My Page...

    Sometimes people will come across your page that you don't know in the real world, but they may come up with their own opinions on you based on what you have posted. For example, if someone were to look at my Instagram profile, they would see a lot of pictures of me at the beach or sitting by the pool with friends because that is what most of the content I have posted is centered around. By looking at this, people may think that I was from a place by the water, or that I love swimming. In reality, I'm from upstate New York (nowhere near a beach) and I don't like going in the water when I'm at the beach. This shows how easy it is to alter your reality when you log online. 

Private Information

    When I signed up for my social media accounts like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc., there was personal information that I had to give out that I put in without a second thought. Some of these things include my email, phone number, and address. While I willingly put this private information into these websites, I put them in trusting that these different platforms would keep the information private. If this information was to get posted online, I would feel very uncomfortable knowing anyone could see this. When thinking about that, it makes me think why I felt comfortable adding this stuff onto these platforms in the first place. I think that leaving this class, I have a lot of new knowledge on how invasive technology is, and I will use a lot more caution before posting all this personal information.