Protecting Your Privacy on Social Networks
Facebook Mat
When you sign up for a social networking site you are probably thinking about hooking up with old friends, not about your privacy. The thing is that you need to worry about it, because the companies who run these sites may share your information. Even if they do not share, on some sites can simply make that information available by way of any search engine. Depending on what information that you give out the results can range from mere annoyance to outright theft of your private information. So how do you decide how much information to put on a social networking site.
1. Figure out how much information is displayed on the public profile that anyone who finds you on a search engine or for people who are not on your friends list.
2. Get access, if you can, to an existing account and find out how much information is shown. You may not want your co-workers to see your home address.
These are your two primary areas of voluntary information dispersal. Your next job is to read over the terms of service (TOS) on the site. Look for both conspicuous language about sharing information with select partners’ and less obvious phrases like, “Reserved rights to user data transfers”. This usually means marketing, but should give you pause. Those terms are broad enough to encompass anything.
Information you should never post:
* Full home address
* Social security number
* Bank names or account types/numbers
* Earnings or debts
* Professional license numbers
There it is, your brief guide to what (and what not) to put on social networking sites.
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