Protecting Your Internet Identity: Are You Naked Online?

Citation

MacDonald, R. (2013), "Protecting Your Internet Identity: Are You Naked Online?", Online Information Review, Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 485-486. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-04-2013-0091

A single individual can seem like many people, depending on the circumstances: sober professional at work, doting father at home and champion beer‐drinker on fishing trips. There's nothing unusual about that, and these different personae would have been easy to keep separate in the past. However, in the age of social media and online records, compartmentalisation of the separate aspects of an individual's life is no longer so easy, and many of us are now “naked online”.

Claypoole (a lawyer with a track record in online privacy and data security issues) and Payton (ex‐White House CIO, and currently cyber‐security consultant) explore this metaphor, with chapters such as How Did You Get Naked?, Time to Get Dressed, and Dress for Career Success. They begin with a discussion of your online persona: the image of you that is formed from what can be easily discovered about you on the internet. For example, your CV may say “dynamic professional”, while your Facebook page says “crazed party animal”: unfortunately, next time you apply for a job, the hiring committee may see both, and base their decision on what they find on Facebook. There is also the issue of how much of your personal information is publicly available, especially if you live in the USA. For instance, public records are often easily searched online: looking up the property records for a house at a given address may find the names of the couple living there. Looking up their marriage record can produce their dates of birth, and maiden name(s). Searching birth records may reveal the names of their parents and their children. Claypoole and Payton devote two chapters to who might be looking at your online persona and other private information, and why. Often, it's about money: somebody checking on your financial status (a car dealer or your fiancé); an online bookshop engaged in behavioural targeting or a fraudster attempting to steal your identity. Sometimes, identity theft is used simply to humiliate you.

Here the book overlaps with Anne Mintz's Web of Deceit (Information Today, Medford, NJ, 2012), but where that book focuses more on Internet misinformation and the criminal use of personal information, Claypoole and Payton address more broadly how to take charge of your online image. They provide extensive advice, beginning with a process of self‐examination: do an Internet search for yourself and see what you find. How do you come across on your friends' social networking pages? What images of yourself can you find online? What you would make of all this information if it were somebody else's? The authors then give practical advice on how to tailor your online persona to reflect how you want to appear: what you can change, and what you cannot, how to promote that desired persona in search engine results and demote the bad bits you can't fix. There is even advice on how to be anonymous online – although you really cannot disappear completely. Packed full of useful tips, telling examples and surprising highlights, this is an excellent book that addresses important issues on online privacy in an easily accessible way.