In business and in life, we leave what’s called a paper trail. On the internet, it’s called often referred to as an electronic paper trail.

Most transaction we make, can be followed. Our bank statement shows how much money we have, and where we spent it. Credit/debit card records are similar. Our medical records are tracked. The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) has records of our earnings and taxes we paid, as does our State government. Electronic copies of all these records are often archived on hard drives, portable media storage, in vaults or secure rooms, and with the proper authorization, they can be viewed.

Credit bureaus have our financial information. With it, they assign a “credit score”.

Companies do a “security clearance” for some types of jobs. Whether they access this information or not, is unknown, however with our social security number, birth date and drivers license number, the electronic information that can be revealed is unlimited.

Although most of this is private information, the amount of public information produced by individuals can also be detrimental.

Blogs are a good example of public information. Blogs are published works of “art”, per se.

Today’s Lesson

A post on The Blog Herald inspired this topic. Written by Andrew G.R, and titled: Blogger Beware: Big Brother Is (Always) Watching,., he says:

More than 40% of large companies read employee e-mails and are hunting for you on the major social networks.

So we have to ask, who is reading our blogs, and who will be reading them in the future?

By “in the future”, I mean 10, 20 or 30 years from now.

Currently our employer could be reading our blog.

Future employers may also read our writings.

You may say, “I’m self employed and I am my own boss”.

But what happens if our current business can’t sustain itself in a flailing economy. What if we’re forced to work for “the man” again. Or what about our spouse. If they work, an employer could easily “Google” the family name and find our blog.

Have we written anything that could be detrimental to our spouse’s employment? Or, our children’s?

O.K., so you say, “Well I can delete my blog”.

Yes you can. But, what about others (our loyal readers) who have quoted us, or the person who plagiarized our work (but left our name intact). We can’t delete their blogs. We could email them and beg to have the articles deleted, but their blog may be in dormancy and their contact information could be invalid. Or is the original post(s) cached/saved in some internet “vault”? Maybe.

And….what did we write in the comment section of other blogs? Could that hurt us?

Then there’s the issue of emails and social networks. Are we projecting a different persona? Are we being more verbal? Exposing a side of ourself that our blog doesn’t project? Are we revealing trade “secrets”?

What if the day comes we (or our spouse) decide to enter into politics? Or our company goes global? Who will dig up our electronic paper trail?

It happens, and it gets people in trouble.

Today’s Assignment

Google yourself

Google you spouse’s name

Do you like what you find?

Could it hurt you a year from now? 10 or 20 years from now? How about 40?

Would you make your grandchildren proud?

How about your “public”?

Do you care?