Social Networking : Stay Safe

Social networking sites have  become an important part of modern culture. When all these websites are with profiles, buddy lists, blogs, photos,video, groups, connections, communications, Its not all sunshine and roses with these sites. There are many drawbacks with them. While Social networking sites like Facebook, twitter may provide you a way to keep in touch with your pals, finding out the latest and greatest news about them, they can be dangerous too. They reveal an inside look at your private life. Few pals may be impressed with pictures of you, but not all. Today, almost anything can be found online about you, especially if you are on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking site. There is high risk of identity theft with such sites with too much personal info online.


Some tips to stay safe with such sites while still socializing with your friends.

1. Set your profile to private.
2. Don't post confidential or personal information.
3. Don't visit SNS sites at work, unless there is no such restrictions at your workplace.
4. Don't assume that your data is private and secure. Keep googling your name once in a while and remove your information from such sites if the search engines have crawled any of your personal information.
5. Do not share your contact details unless absolutely necessary.
6. Do not use office email addresses as they may contain company names.
7. If you have your own website use a Contact Me page which delivers messages directly to you. Contactify is one such option.
8. Be conservative with your pictures on blogs and social networking sites.
9. Make sure your friends check with you before they upload your photographs. Tagging in Orkut, lets people identify you.
10. Don't share your daily feed to anyone unless they are your close friends.
11. Stalking by strangers and even close friends or bitter enemies is common in social networking. In fact they do create fake profiles to stalk on you. Beware!!!