First a quick aside, at 12:50 today we suffered a total communications outage – how total you ask? Well no voice, no data, no answers from our provider, no updates from our provider and finally when I did manage to communicate with our provider – no information. Our provider is Vodafone, what do they provide – well all data and voice to start with along with the security of a single point of contact – which failed today. When I left the office today we had been offline from 12:50 through to 17:20, but most likely it’s fixed now – well I hope that it is.
The reason for this post after such a long time is, I work with someone who is full of conspiracy theories. I’ve even offered to make him a Aluminium foil hat, mainly because he’s so paranoid about the conspiracy theories. Still it did re-kindle the interest in our good old digital footprint, even if it isn’t really what I was thinking about this morning. We wander around leaving a digital footprint as I’ve already said in this Blog, but few people actually have any idea just how much of a footprint we actually leave behind us.
Some months ago I said I’d try and actually identify where I’d left a digital marker behind me during the course of a day, well after my conversation with my conspiracy theorist I decided to think about where I’d been that I might have been “seen” to leave a digital marker. Below is what I think was the likely scenario, there are probably more hits for one or more of my digital devices that I haven’t thought of.
So below are the times and places I believe that I left a trail.
- Glasgow Airport – ANPR, used local WiFi, made a mobile call and used Loyalty Card
- East Kilbride filling station – ANPR and used loyalty card.
- Made a mobile call and swiped in to my office.
- Before lunch made a further three mobile calls before swiping out of the office.
- During Lunch break used debit card, used loyalty card and used an ATM
- After returning to the office in the afternoon made a further 18 calls from mobile.
The above doesn’t include the myriad of security cameras that I was probably seen on and the ANPR cameras that I know nothing about. I know that there are probably a large number of these, there are certainly sufficient to allow the government to discontinue the use of Road Tax Discs. By my reckoning there are at least 33 points during today where someone could actually pinpoint my position, worth thinking about I’d say – before more freedoms are given up.