Digital Profile

Recently, I was required by one of my jobs to go through a Security Awareness Training module which attempted to demonstrate the various threats that could arise as a consequence of not taking the proper security precautions. Perhaps one of the most amusing items I was to raise my awareness to was the issue of digital profiles. It may be possible, for example, for me to cause a breach in our network if my digital profile contains any kind of classified information. 

While I can understand the need to protect privileged information - of which I hardly even have access to - I find it amusing the approach that has been taken... I am to understand that any and all activity I have done on the internet is being compiled into something called my "digital profile" and that this digital profile will be something like a permanent record. Watch out, kids. She said that everything you do on the internet is being closely monitored...

Until about five or ten minutes ago, I was still plugged into the network by which I mean "the Facebook giant." I had a "digital profile," and it read: "I am a Facebook monster." I never said anything though that would jeopardize my own personal security or that of my employers. I just used it as a social networking tool that connected me to people I would rarely see or get to talk to.

As time went on though, I began to see Facebook in a different light: as a "Big Brother" force using my family and my friends to perpetrate its crime. This was demonstrated all the more so when I went to delete my account, as Facebook lined up my family and my friends and said to me, "But so-and-so will miss you..."

I should hope that deleting my account would remove me forever from within their database, but it seems all I would have to do to re-activate my account would be to enter my same username and password and everything would be like it was. Maybe there is something to be said for the concept of a digital profile...

Before deleting my Facebook account, I deleted my Goodreads, Myspace, and Foursquare accounts with the same goal in mind. And, I may continue to purge myself of the various internet parasites if I continue to feel impinged upon by these "tools." Call it an "exercise in personal freedom" or a "demonstration against the majority" or whatever it is you need me to say for my frustrations to be understood. It is done, and I already feel much better.