Tracking digital shadows
7 a.m.: You wake up and look outside your window. It's raining, so you decide to check the weather on television. Without realizing it, you've already shared information about yourself, possibly to hundreds of people, and your day has just begun.
In your daily life, there are dozens of ways you transmit personal information -without ever logging on to a computer -from using your credit card, to walking down a city street. Taken together, that information is called a person's digital shadow.
With all the technology advances of the last 20 years, the length of an average person's digital shadow has grown tremendously, and will grow even more in the coming years. The more information out there, the more chances there are that it can be used by others, sometimes against you, either as a way to profile you for a marketing campaign, or for more nefarious uses like stealing your identity, appropriating sensitive corporate data, or stalking your every move.
"It's the sort of trail that you may not be aware of, because you don't have physical contact with the machine that may be collecting the information," said Colin Mc-Kay, the director of research, education and outreach with the office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
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