Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Precautions & Tips To Protect Online Privacy

If you're privacy obsessed, the more you should be cautious on what you should post online particularly on social networking sites such as Facebook.

So, if you're a "live-life-out loud person" which means you offer a play-by-play of your life to your 1,000 Facebook friends, twitter, etc...these are the steps to be aware of:

- On your social network profiles, check out privacy settings and decide whom you want to access to what information from your friend's list. Be careful with those cute pictures of your kid too. As you post any as they get older, you could get charged with child pornography!
- Don't post your birth year on your profile. Your full birth date is usually a date point that banks use to confirm your identity.
- Protect your PC and internet with a password and a firewall and be sure anti-spyware and anti-virus are turned on. This prevents hackers from tracking your internet activity and stealing financial passwords.
- Don't fall into prey from "phishing" emails that seems it comes from your bank, asking you to confirm your username and password because this is one way thieves can steal your identity.
-If you're using a public wi-fi, avoid doing online banking to access your account.
- Before you post anything online - whether status update or a comment, ask yourself; - "What am I getting out of sharing this?"; "Does it show the "me" I want to be?".

If you're an "easygoing surfer person" which means you post your updates and photos to Facebook but with limitations as to who can access them, do the tips given above including the following:
- If you're wary of marketers getting information on your interests to target to sell you things, don't "Like" sites and groups on Facebook.

If you're a "fly-under"-the radar" person which means you get worried that someone is posting your photos somewhere;
- Creat your private, password-protected site like kodakgallery.com to share them with your family and friends.
- Set up a google alert for your name by filling out the form at google.com/alerts in order to keep tabs on where you're appearing online. If you see sites you're not comfortable with, click on the site's privacy policy to find out if you can have it removed.

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