Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew project and an author of both the 2000 and 2007 surveys, told me that she was surprised by the reduced concern about online publication of personal information. Internet users are not just passively allowing personal information to slip from their control and end up online, where it is searchable; they are also actively putting the information online themselves. The 'Digital Footprints' study coined a new phrase, 'active digital footprint,' to refer to the personal information that individuals increasingly place online voluntarily...
The day may come when nothing that is said online will be treated as embarrassing because we will have become accustomed to everyone disclosing everything. The Pew study phrases this possibility as a question: 'Will we come to be more forgiving of embarrassing or unflattering information trails as more of us have our own experiences with personal data leftovers gone bad?'
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