One of the oft overlooked aspects of our digital world is that is has a near-flawless memory. Unlike the paper, ink and magnetic tape of the old analog world, the ones and zeros of digital information never deteriorate. That, of course, means that the digital information you push out into the world (i.e. your website, email, digitized television and radio spots, banner ads, blog posts, press releases, etc.) never go away.

If you’ve changed the design and content of your website 3 times in the past 10 years, don’t think that those old designs aren’t still floating around out there in cyberspace. They may not be as easy to access, but they’re there. When Google crawls the web, a snapshot of your site is taken at that moment in time and archived. Even if you deleted that email from your inbox, there are still copies in the recipient’s inbox as well as on the servers in between. And those servers are often backed up daily and the copies sent off site.

The lesson, in short, is be careful. There’s no way to burn the evidence of your old website or sweep away that email you fired off in a moment of anger. Customers and the media will find these things, eventually. And if they have good reason, they’ll use them against you.

D. Jones
Marketing Strategist/Creative Consultant
SmackDabble, LLC