3/31/2021 0 Comments Cyber SleuthingWell, it is safe to say I wouldn't be a first pick to be hired as Penelope Garcia's assistant on Criminal Minds. If you're not sure who I am talking about, Penelope Garcia is a fictional character from the crime drama, Criminal Minds. Penelope is the technical analyst of the behavioural analysis unit. She very easily can find and investigate all data and information to provide to the FBI team for anyone they need "dirt" on. This week in our EDTC 300 course, we were asked to do some cyber sleuthing (kind of similar to what Penelope does just not nearly as cool as her job). We have been focusing on our own digital identities and footprints in previous classes. We've also been learning about the importance of our own and other's personal digital identities. And last class we were asked to do some investigating ourselves on someone we did not know but was also in the Education Faculty. We had to find information on these areas: professional, biographical, personal, where they are located on social media/online, our overall impression of them and if we would trust this person based on what we could find on their personal digital identity. We also had to share if we would suggest them changing anything about their online presence. We were only given a short 20 minutes to do some creeping/stalking. And by the end of that time, as a group, we had quite a bit of information on this person. Thankfully for this person we stalked, they had a lot of positive information online that isn't considered harmful or dangerous. With this being said, we were still able to learn a lot about this stranger from the information we loaded from her online presence. But this isn't the case for many others online. Often photos, statements, and other online documentation can come back to haunt or hurt one if the wrong hand gets a hold of it. In one of the TED Talks we were asked to watch this week, it talked about how 1, just 1 tweet could ruin your life. In this TED talk it shared how social media gives us the chance to speak up and share but with that comes with having to rethink how we interact with others online. Jon Ronson talks about "giving a voice to the voiceless" which means that just because one may think something doesn't mean we need to post it for the whole world to see. We should be sharing valuable or important information that can be seen as beneficial. Picture above retrieved from: https://images.app.goo.gl/PB3NLSNDfttuyeyV8 Getting back to my cyber sleuthing...the point of this week's task was to see what we could find on someone else in our class. By doing this task, it allows me to share with my partner what I found from my end, which then can let my partner know what other people like future bosses, colleagues, students and parents may be able to see too. So, lets get started. I was partnered with Sarah Adams-Huber to "cyber stalk/sleuth". Overall, Sarah keeps a very "locked-up" and clean online presence. Sarah may do this on purpose or I may need to get some tips from Ms. Garcia to help me investigate a little deeper ;). Sarah doesn't use her given name on her social media sites, which made it trickier for me to find her. When I did a quick search of "Sarah Adams-Huber" on Google, I didn't find a thing on her. I follow her on Twitter which gave me some information about her location and where she studies for post-secondary. Attached to her Twitter, I could get access to her Wordpress, blog. This gave me a little bit more information about her and her interests (she loves cats :) ). I messaged Sarah asking her for her social media "name", which she provided me. But this still didn't give me a whole lot more information on Sarah. Her Facebook account shares pictures of herself, animals, partner and some life updates. I couldn't access information from her Instagram as it was locked and we aren't following each other. I've created a sheet which I will share with Sarah that lays out all the information I found that she can use as she likes (as I don't think I should be sharing all the information I found online without her permission). Overall, I would say Sarah has a positive online presence and I wouldn't suggest she changes anything. This task is fun but also eye-opening as our digital identities could be potentially dangerous if something negative is shared and then found by someone who later posts it in a harmful way.
I am curious to see what Sarah found on me and if I need to make any changes about the way I present myself online. Haley :)
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