Privacy diary – days six and seven

As part of my work for Unit H807 from my MEd course with the Open University, I am keeping a privacy diary for a week. It appears I’ve had an irony bypass, because I’m publishing my privacy diary here. I wonder what I will discover?

And on the sixth day, nothing of any significance happened. At least nothing on the privacy front. Day seven was a fairly quiet day too: I posted some bits and pieces online, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The main result of writing this diary is that I’ve been a lot more sensitive to privacy issues this week. My privacy paranoia extends to reading the small print and checking the settings on the various services that I use, but overall I’m happy with the balance between privacy and what I publish online.

Pete Yeomans published some interesting thoughts earlier this week:

The thing that strikes me is that ordinary decent socially responsible behaviour on the web bears no threat. [...]

Remember:  The internet and social networks are inert.  They are a mirror.
Web 2.0 can  facilitate the stripping back of  inhibition as we forget we are speaking to the world.  I suggest the internet is the most truthful mirror we can ever look into.

[...] Look in the mirror.  Decide: Do you want to share your deepest darkest and most shameful habits with the world?

Overall I’m not too worried about my digital footprint. In fact, I drew attention to it when applying for my current job, but I’ve never published pictures of myself with a traffic cone on my head.