Digital Footprint, Privacy and Community Management

Your digital footprint is everything about you that exists online. The active part is what you post; the passive part is what is collected about you or posted by others — tags, location data, someone else's photo with you in the background. Every digital photo also carries EXIF metadata: the camera or phone model, the settings, the date and time, and — if location services are on — the GPS coordinates to within a few metres. Many large social platforms strip this data from public images when they are uploaded, but files sent as email attachments, shared through cloud links, sent as 'documents' in messaging apps or posted on personal websites often keep all of it. The safe habit is to remove it yourself: turn off location tagging in the camera app, use the share option that removes location, or export with metadata stripped.

• The background talks. House numbers, street signs, licence plates, a school logo on a jersey, a timetable on the fridge, and reflections in windows and sunglasses have all been used to locate people.
• Combinations identify. A first name alone is harmless; first name plus school plus team plus neighbourhood narrows to one person.
• Real-time location reveals patterns. A geotag on a story says where you are right now. Posting after you have left — 'post late' — removes the risk and loses nothing.
• Deleting is not erasing. Screenshots, reposts, archives and the platform's own backups mean anything posted should be treated as permanent.
• Lock down the account itself: a strong unique password, two-factor authentication, and for an organization's account, at least two administrators so it is never lost when one person leaves.

• Anyone under 18 needs a parent or guardian's consent on the release before identifiable footage of them is published.
• Check the consent list before publishing, not after. Some students must not appear in published media at all, sometimes for serious safety reasons such as a custody or protection order. Schools and boards keep a media consent list; blur or cut anyone not cleared.
• Do not attach identifying details to minors: no full names, schedules or locations alongside their faces, and never identify a young person in a sensitive context.
• Most major platforms require users to be at least 13, and some features have higher minimums. An account for a younger audience is the wrong place for a campaign.
• You usually keep copyright in what you upload, but you grant the platform a licence — typically worldwide, non-exclusive and royalty-free — to host, display and distribute it. Read the terms before uploading client or commissioned work.
• Community guidelines are enforceable. A platform can remove posts or close an account that breaks its rules, and an organization that built its whole audience there can lose it overnight.

• Publish a short comment policy and pin it: what is welcome, what is removed (harassment, hate, spam, personal information), and what happens to repeat offenders. Removing a comment is far easier to defend when the rule existed first.
• Know the tools: keyword filters that hide comments automatically, hide (only the writer still sees it), delete, restrict, block and report. Hiding is often better than deleting because it does not start a second argument.
• Criticism is not abuse. A complaint about the event starting late deserves a calm, public, helpful reply in the account's voice. Personal attacks, threats and slurs do not deserve a reply at all.
• Do not feed trolls. Arguing publicly rewards the attention-seeking behaviour and spreads the comment to more people.
• Escalate what is serious. Threats of violence, self-harm, hate or anything involving a minor go to the platform and to a responsible adult or school administration immediately — not just quietly deleted.

Canada's Competition Act prohibits false or misleading representations to promote a product or business. The Competition Bureau has said that a post promoting something without revealing a material connection — payment, free products, discounts, a job with the company, or a family tie — can be misleading, and that both the brand and the person posting can be held responsible. Ad Standards' influencer disclosure guidelines set out what clear disclosure looks like: a plain label such as #ad or #sponsored, placed where it is seen before the 'more' cut-off, repeated on every sponsored post, and said or shown inside a video as well as in the caption. Vague abbreviations such as #sp or #spon, or a disclosure buried among twenty hashtags, do not count.