How Big is Your Digital Footprint Anyway?

From securityweek.com

Those of us at a certain age (ahem) grew up in a simpler time. Email was largely unheard of. There was no social media, no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. There was no e-commerce, no Amazon, Alibaba or Taobao. No online banking. No online dating. Credit card transactions were processed manually. Local businesses accepted personal checks. 

In short, there really wasn’t any such thing as a “digital footprint,” where personal information resides virtually, in an electronic ether, potentially available for anyone to see.

But over the last two decades, we’ve moved more and more of our lives into that realm. And almost as soon as we began, people attempted to gain inappropriate access to information of all kinds.

Today we are still adjusting to this new reality. With each new service that comes online, we move more of our lives, more of ourselves, into the digital world. Our digital footprints roam farther and wider.

And at this point,  there have been so many high-profile breaches that a person’s entire life could be laid out, triangulated and, ultimately, faked by someone with the wrong set of intentions.

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