Watch Your Back on the Internet: Everything Is On The Record

In our digital age never forget everything is on the record.

This past week we had news of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter who is pregnant. That sent people scurrying to look up the MySpace page of the daughter’s boyfriend, Levi Johnson.

On his homepage (which has been subsequently removed) Johnson declares himself “a redneck” and offers other colourful comments.(http://tinyurl.com/63lgnp).

Who would have thought the MySpace ramblings of this Alaskan teenager would be make US Election news?

Thanks to YouTube we also know the former head of the US Democratic National Committee, Don Fowler, believes the coincidence of Hurricane Gustav bearing down on New Orleans and the timing of this week’s Republican Convention “demonstrates God is on our side”.

That insight was captured by a fellow air traveller on a cell phone camera and then uploaded to Youtube (http://tinyurl.com/6bznw4).

Scary stuff. In the age of the Internet remember that your digital signature is very long and what goes out through the Internet may one day come back to haunt you.

I'm worry that people posting their party and other exploits to Facebook and such sites might one day regret how quick they hit the upload button.

So it's better to:

• Assume every email or post to MySpace, Facebook etc may one day go public.
• Say nothing in public you would not want your mother or your boss to see on YouTube.
• Be particularly careful of images you post on-line.