Image from Pieter Baert

You can’t hide these days.  You really can’t.  You can get close.  You can try untagging every single picture of you on Facebook, filling out the bare minimum on your LinkedIn profile, avoid any online activity whatsoever, and go hide in a dark cave.  But even then, I’m guessing Google will find bits and pieces of information on you.

These days, you almost have to accept that people will at least know of your existence, if not your relationship status, your current city, and where you just “checked in.”  As young professionals living in a world of free flowing information, our job is to determine just how much or how little privacy we feel comfortable with and then make sure that we do everything we can to be at that level.

Everyone needs their own space – none of us are meant to have our lives analyzed and inspected by the rest of the world.  But some of us are a bit more, shall we say… “attention-centric” than others.  We don’t mind having a lot of details of our lives available, but even we have our limits.

As someone that works (or rather, used to work) in the world of web development, I’m used to putting information up on the Internet.  I may have taken that to an extreme, though, when I applied that to myself.  My online presence is equivalent to a big, flashing, neon sign with an arrow that says “Shanif is here.”  As someone that maintains a wide variety of sites, including a personal website, not to mention my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts, there’s a lot of information about me available at your fingertips.

For the most part, I’m okay with it all being out there.  After a series of life-lessons taught me that I needed to start living like my life would be examined during a political campaign, I don’t have many things to be worried about.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a few skeletons that I don’t want to be made public (everyone has ‘em).  So when I see that someone did a search for “shanif” on Google, found my site, spent a couple of hours browsing through my old blogs and checking out the pictures from my most recent vacation, it causes me to stop and wonder whether I’m really and truly comfortable with putting so much of myself out there.

Overall, I think I am.  I figure that someone’s just trying to get to know me better (in a very roundabout, ineffective, strangely-complementary-yet-kind-of-creepy way).  My biggest concern isn’t a lack of privacy, it’s that someone will start thinking they know who I am based on things I’ve posted in the past, as opposed to really getting into a conversation with me and learning about me the easy way (I have a lot of opinions and I love to share them if you give me the chance).  And after all, I’m trying to build a personal brand, so I gotta start somewhere.

A lot of you may not have that same level of comfort.  In fact, I know a lot of you don’t.  If Facebook took away the “untag” feature, I have no doubt there would be a mini-mutiny on their hands.  So how do you make sure you get the level of privacy that’s appropriate for you, even in this day and age?

It all goes back to the source – live your life like everyone’s watching, and if you don’t feel comfortable with someone knowing about that little something you’re thinking about doing, either don’t do it, or make sure you have some damn good friends there that will help you delete all of the evidence.  Also, don’t post anything you don’t want the world to see, even if it’s protected, private, hidden with a password, or whatever.  Things can easily be shared with others these days, and a trusted contact may soon be a hated enemy.  As far as social networking goes, untag pictures that others post of you if you really don’t want others to see them (I have a personal policy of trying not to untag anything – it goes with the whole “live your life as if it’s an open book” policy).  Hide your profile if you really want.  Put up an image of a flower instead of your bright, smiling face where your profile picture would normally go.  Take safeguards.  Don’t put up a personal website unless you have to.

Just be smart about what you do – it’ll get you a long way.