Digital Footprints Resources and Techniques For Getting Your Digital Footprint

Digital Footprints Resources and Techniques For Getting Your Digital Footprint

Sachhit Anasane

Second Year, Department of Computer Science and Engineering

1. s College of Engineering & Technology Amravati, India

   AbstractDay by day size of digital footprints is increasing very fast. People have number of online accounts, data, photos, various cloud services etc. even they dont know anything about their digital footprints. Using this resources and techniques anyone can clean up their useless digital footprints which are easily available as open source.

   KeywordsDigital Footprints, CyberSecurity, OSINT, Privacy Security.

   1. INTRODUCTION

      An individuals digital footprint isnt usually given a second though but legacy content can be liability not only to ones professional reputation to an individuals personal security posture. The more the personal Information available about you on online various platforms, the easier it is for threat actors to effectively target you.

      We all know, the content we shared will remain forever, but there are some easy ways to get the simple digital footprint of yourself. Lets see how-

      • OSINT (Open Source Intelligence)

   2. RESOURCES AND TECHNIQUES

      First, by understanding of how much personal information about you is posted or shared online, can tell you how much information you can get.

      To get your digital footprint, by using OSINT, I will suggest the first source is always GOOGLE. You can gather so many information by using some well-crafted dorks. Below are some you may find useful.

      Name

      Name site:Instagram.com or facebook.com [name] + "hometown"

      [name] + "company you work for" inurl:resume "john smith"

      Name +related terms with you intext:resume "john smith"

      "text of a tweet' -site:https://twitter.com

      @twitterhandle -site:twitter.com/twitterhandle

      Social Media

      Most of the digital footprint of yours will be on Social Media Platforms. Just create a list of accounts past and present across as many platforms as you have accounts. We can use this list also in above google dorks.

      Sites like SOCIALCATFISH(https://socialcatfish.com/) also can help you to locate accounts you may have forgotten about.

      You may also check for:

      Shopping sites, Government sites Food Delivery sites

      Trading portals

      Entertainment sites

      The Clean Up

      Unsubscribe

      In this step, go through all your email accounts and unsubscribe to the mails, newsletters which you dont actually read anymore.

      Delete all the not useful emails, keep inbox clean and dont forget to clean the SPAM box also.

      Deleting

      Now, delete all the old, unused accounts which you have found. This will not only benefits in reducing your digital footprint but mitigates any risk of future breaches on the platform.

      Keep secured all current accounts

      1. Delete old photos, posts and comments and any posted content that may give location status, landmarks etc.

      2. Untag yourself from photos, posts, events you dont want to be associated with.

      3. Set up all the privacy and security settings, use complex passwords and enable 2FAs.

   3. CONCLUSION

      This resources and techniques will be helpful for maintain Privacy and Security of yourself. If everyone has implemented this, then it will be more helpful to reduce Cyber Crimes also.

   4. REFERENCES

1. SocialCatFish (https://socialcatfish.com)

2. Google (https://google.com)