How to Clean Up You're Online Identity

This day and age, any employer and or potential client is going to google search you, so ask yourself what will they find? To start cleaning up your identity just do a google search for your name. See what comes up, also check the image search. If you find something you are linked to that isn't what you want to be associated with, try and login to that website and delete the account. If it can't be deleted for some reason, find the contact info for the site's administrator and send them a polite email, letting them know what you are trying to do. Most will be helpful in this situation.

Remember to do a search not only with google but check Yahoo and Bing as well. If you find something and you do request removal it will take a bit for google and other search engines to re-index those sites so your name does not come up as associated with them anymore. Another important thing is to repeat the same process under image search for each search engine.

Now that you have found and fixed issues with your real name, you need to repeat this same process but search with your email address. If you submit an email address to a potential employer or have it on your business site, more then likely it will get searched for.

Now onto the stuff that is going to make you cringe most likely, it did for me. Facebook has been around for awhile now, and just maybe when you signed up you were not as level headed as you are now, or you were more into the party scene. When i went back and seen what i posted i thought "what was i thinking!!!" So now is the time to go back and look through all, yes i said ALL of your posts and see which ones are not so great. Remove them! Delete pictures that you may have uploaded that show you acting a fool. Its not ideal for an employer or potential client to see you slamming beers or shots at a bar/party blasted out of your mind with your clothes ripped. You can of course save these pictures to your computer before deleting them from Facebook.

So now that you have cleaned up your terrible past Facebook posts and possible embarrassing photos its time to secure your Facebook. The last thing you need after putting in this work is to go out to a party have a good time, to only have a friend snap a picture and upload it to Facebook. So we need to enable the feature that allows you to review tagged post before they are posted with your name on them. To do this simply click on the little down arrow at the top right of your Facebook page, then go to settings, once in the settings menu, select the Timeline and Tagging section on the left side. This is where you can control tagging here is a screen shot of my settings

Once you have the tagging under control you will want to have a look at your privacy settings as well, on the left hand side click the privacy section here is a screen shot of mine

Remember that Facebook isn't the only social media platform, if you belong to others, such as twitter and Instagram. Check threw them as well. Its pointless if you did all this work and you forgot that 2 years ago you put a picture on Instagram of you smoking crack behind a dumpster just for laughs..... just kidding but you get the picture. Don't smoke crack its bad for you!

Some of you might be thinking... this is great and all but what if i want to post whatever i want online and have some fun, well your in luck because i am going to show you how to step your game up in your OpSec (operational security, online amenity and internet security)