How you're giving away your private information online without even realising it - 5 reasons to fear your permanent record
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Loading... - Ivana Lucija
- 23 Feb 2021
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Permanent records in the real world contain information that has some sort of administrative, historical, or legal worth.
There’s a reason they need to be preserved such as your medical history, a criminal record, a birth certificate, or perhaps a will.
But what about permanent records online? Information doesn't fade away like it used to. What was once lost in files, is now there ready and searchable, for who knows how long.
Is it something to be worried about, even to fear? What even is a permanent record?
Here are five things you should know - and fear:
1. Your permanent record online has no defined value.
It equally gathers important and meaningless information about you and keeps it forever. Your birth certificate gets filed with your tweets. It’s just a big melting pot of everything you do online. That means pictures, web browser histories, sites you join, emails, attachments, posts and so on, forming a profile of yourself that may be nothing like who you really are.
Every time you go online, you’re adding another entry to this in-erasable entity. There is no privacy with an online permanent record. Permanent in most instances, just means public.
2. You can't delete it - no matter how you try.
Sometimes you hear a permanent record referred to as a ‘digital footprint.’ But that’s not quite accurate. Some footprints can be covered or removed. But a permanent record can’t be deleted from the Internet. When you pull down a Twitter post or empty your inbox, that information doesn’t just disappear. Once information goes public, it gets collected and retained by apps, people, companies, data collectors and the government. Even if you close an account like Instagram or Snapchat, traces of your history remain. The only difference being you can’t get into the app anymore.
3. Facebook has a permanent record on you. Google has one too.
With Facebook, it doesn’t even matter if you belong to Facebook. The company can track you on any site that connects to Facebook with a “like” box. The company can also track non-member friends of Facebook users.
4. While your record has no legal value to you, its a goldmine to others.
Permanent records online in most cases have no historical or legal value, not to us anyway. They are a goldmine however to the companies collecting and maintaining them.
Here’s what that could mean to you:
-When you apply for a job, you risk your possible employer looking at pieces of your permanent record. Instead of basing their approval entirely on your resume, interview skills, and recommendations, they could choose ‘yeah’ or ‘nay’ based on your old Facebook posts and long-forgotten tweets.
-When you apply for insurance, insurance companies could put together pieces of your health record from different sites to build a health profile of you that decides acceptance or denial.
-When you defend yourself in a court of law, your permanent record, even silly and inane pieces within it, could be used against you.
-When you try to date, gossip and hearsay posted online will trail you, potentially creating a false reputation about you, leaving you in a sad state of dateless isolation.
-When you’re trying to keep politics to yourself, any actions you’ve taken in support of any political party can be used to inundate you with stories on your newsfeed pertaining to that political affiliation, leaving you with an unreal presentation of truth.
-When you apply for a loan, you could be rejected based on your nuggets extracted from your permanent record.
-When you want to rent a space, those distant memories of your blue hair and pierced tongue could come back to haunt you.
5. ‘The Right to be Forgotten’
This win by European users against Google has the potential to let users regain some control of their permanent record.
People should have the right to clean their records. They should be able to maintain their truth online. The problem however is you still must go through a process, leap through some hoops, to get that information removed from Google’s search engine.
It’s better than nothing though, which is how life is in the United States.
Our right to online privacy
We need online privacy to protect ourselves, our families, and our friends. With a permanent record, we also need online privacy to protect our reputation and ability to earn a living. Our digital self should mirror that of ourselves. That requires better control of our private information. We should have means to ensure its accuracy.
Laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are a step in the right direction. But be careful regardless about what you do and post online. It’s no longer a question of if someone is watching, but rather the numbers of entities doing it.
