Digital Footprints In The World

Like so many people these days, I am fascinated by my family tree, and as a consequence, I have a subscription to one of those sites through which you can research records and build your tree.

But today, I was able to research something that was as equally fascinating as anything that my ancestors might have revealed.

I have the kind of subscription that enables me to discover any mention within newspapers and other more general media.

And this afternoon, I simply did a search on myself.

I found the results very interesting, in that this simple search made me realise how much we leave traces of ourselves in the modern world.

And since many of the traces of that we leave, are left within that part of the world that is is described as the public domain, we may not realise the full extent of the traces that we leave when we are making them.

In other words, nobody asks permission for certain kinds of data before it is revealed for the whole world to see.

Or at least that part of the world for whom it is a matter of course to be able to access the Internet and to make subscriptions to those kind of organisations that make this data easily available.

It is a sobering thought to discover the extent of these digital footprints, and I suppose in my own case, this has been most obviously through the fact that I have been a Director registered at Companies House on several occasions, almost always as the Director of a charitable company, and this in no way represents me as someone that has had a successful business career.

I suspect that many of us remain blissfully unaware of the extent to which we leave traces of ourselves in all kinds of contexts, not least of all in the United Kingdom through being registered to vote at a particular address.

Simply being on the electoral roll is sufficient for our place of residence to be listed, along with all of those also registered at the same address.

This is good news for anyone wishing to find or locate someone that has no reason to hide their tracks.

And it will constitute an interesting social history record for those in the future, wishing to undertake research as to who was living where and when, at some point in the future.

For I suspect this information will outlive most of us about whom it discourses.

Once a footprint has been made in this digital world, I suspect it is virtually impossible to remove it.