How many of you have ever Googled yourself to discover what is being said about you (and by whom)? How many of you have searched for information about a prospective employee, or researched a date before a big night? Many of you will also have looked up information about a prospective new home, school or college before reaching an informed decision.

We all have an online status, whether we have created this ourselves in a blog, website or social network community, or even just by shopping online. But how can we get an accurate measure of our digital status? For that matter, how can we positively influence the way we are perceived online?

Qdos is a new free service provided by online identity experts, Garlik. Currently in the beta stage of testing, Qdos aspires to provide a useful, informative and influential authority of our digital status by assigning each registered member with a Qdos score which consists of four different components:

• Popularity

Who you know and the extent of your online network.

• Impact

How much people listen to what you say online.

• Activity

What you do online e.g. shop, chat, blog.

• Individuality

How easy you are to find online according to your name, your age etc

Put simply, the more you are out there surfing, buying, selling and socialising online, the higher your QDOS score.

Initially I was somewhat concerned about privacy when I first read about this service, especially as having so much of one's online presence focused in one place may well attract unwanted attention from identity theives. Having read the terms and conditions of the QDOS service, I am fairly satisfied that personal information held by Garlik would not be passed on to third parties without consent (although details of websites you are associated with would be available for the public to read and use).

I'm quite interested to see how QDOS develops, especially as interest in this service grows and social networkers begin using this as a method of determining each other's status. At present I'm awaiting an invite to become a member of the program, and would recommend you also register your interest if you plan on using this service once it comes out of the beta stage.

Could our digital status become a tool which prospective employees, landlords and even banks use to make decisions about us in the future? Well, I would certainly not be surprised!