Facebook hack means rethinking digital privacy

If you weren’t worried about how much of your personal information was available online before, seeing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Facebook page hacked should have done the trick.

As more details of our lives move online, should we be concerned about the type of information that’s out there?

Experts say yes.

It’s certainly becoming more and more important to manage our digital footprints, mainly because certain things we post online may have serious repercussions down the line.

Think about it, there are certain things you may have done or said as a teenager that you may not want online now that you’re a professional. 

TG Daily sat down with PeekYou.com founder Michael Hussey to get personal about our online identities.

“There may be more information out there than you’re aware of,” said Hussey. “Sometimes people open accounts years ago and completely forget that their personal information still exists on old sites.”

That’s why Hussey created, PeekYou.com, an all-in-one search engine for all things social on the Internet.

He explains that with Google, there may be information hidden deep within the search pages, whereas with PeekYou you can view all your online information in one search engine result.

Searching my name, I found my “PeekYou score,” which tells me my digital importance online, along with all the social networking sites I use, and some I may have forgot about.  Hussey explains that this is the reason people use the service  is to find these long lost sources of public information.

But clearly PeekYou.com isn’t just used by individuals searching for their own names. Employers, parents, and those with less valid intentions are all allowed to use the site.

That said, it gives you that much more of a reason to figure out what’s online and update it, or take it down.