You are naked!

The internet has made the world a true global village. Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword". I would today rephrase it as "The keyboard is the mightier than the sword". People have been either stripped or stripping themselves digitally, consciously or unconsciously. No. I don't mean porno you pervs. I mean loss of privacy. Just as people leave stuff around in their house that can reveal their dna if examined, like hair, people leave digital footprints in their own computer or in places they have no control over, revealing a lot about them.

Lets say, my friend gave me a laptop to examine and tell me what kind of person used that laptop, I could begin with as simple as.

1) Examine list of installed software.
2) Examine the browser.
Fire up the browser and look at the following
a) History
b) Bookmarks
c) Cache
d) Temp files.
e) Cookies.
f) Stored passwords.
An average person probably keeps a lot of cached files around.
3) Look at IM logs.
Take Pidgin/YIM/Trillian as examples, you dont even has to be logged on to find this information,
a) They reveal the person's friend's list
b) If the person logged conversations, they would be in plain text or in the case of YIM (XOR'ed with your id)
4) A peek at my documents application data directories is a treasure trove of information, especially if a the person is well organized.
5) History of applications (Microsoft Word/Excell/Photoshop) that reveal the person recently edited.
6) Media players what the person recently watched.

I can now take a good guess about a person's personality. In yester years it was gossip or public actions that tradionally led others to know about a person. Now combine the above with the ones below, a stranger can know a lot about a person even without meeting or talking to the person and without 3rd person gossip.

Take it to the next level and determine the social connections and personality of the person.

7) Examining the social connectivity of the person via social networks. If the person has a public profile, then it is the Holy Grail!
a) Type of friends.
b) Events attended
c) Hobbies, ratings on different quizzes.
d) Self expression.
e) The causes supported
f) The political standings
etc
8) Blogs, Forums,

Think I am full of crap, well check out this article that was reported on Slashdot.

Take it to the next level of what the government can know about you. This presentation titled "Death of Anonymous Travel" is a good indication of how data can mined and where technology is headed.

All one can do is be careful about the digital footprint they leave behind. Stuff posted on social networks can easily come back to haunt a person.
Ex:
1) Suggestions on what not to do
2) Tweet about a job offer
3) Facebook and boring job
4) Boss and Facebook

Recommended reading: Future of online reputation