While many people love using Facebook for its social connection it also comes with a lot of concerns as well. There have been many reports of identity theft, home burglaries, personal injury cases, and so on that are linked to Facebook all because users put too much personal information on the site and tend to trust people that are their Facebook “friends”. While facebook does have areas for you to input your address and other things, they don’t actually recommend that you do this as it does raise safety concerns. Facebook also recommends that you do not post online when you are leaving on vacation and other things as this does tell people that your home is going to be vacant for 2 weeks or however long you are away.
When you create a Facebook account you are opening yourself up to the entire world. Anyone can view your information unless you change your privacy settings so that only your Facebook friends can see this information. Employers also use Facebook to check on the “character” of people that they are considering for a position with their organization. If you claim to be one thing in an interview and then your Facebook account shows something completely different, you’d better be ready to explain yourself. Common sense will aid in helping you to make the right decisions when it comes to using facebook and to staying safe.
Since a lot of schoolchildren are not recognizing the impact of what they say on Facebook can lead to a lot of child abuse cases, the President of the United States even encouraged kids to start watching what they say. People are not just posting information that can get them in trouble in their state, but it opens the doors to fraud all over the country.
Use the privacy controls! When it comes to Facebook you really need to look into the privacy controls that it has. What you need to do is sign into your account and then click on the upper right hand side where it says “account” and then click on “privacy settings”. You have the option to choose how private you would like your page to be. You can have it be only your friends that see the information you post or you can have it be open to the public.
Be careful about the people that you add as a friend on Facebook. You don’t need to add anyone and everyone, especially be careful about who you are adding that you don’t know. People that have a picture of a cat and hardly any information may not be a person you even know, even if their name sounds familiar. This is how a lot of child molesters find their victims and its also how fraudulent companies and scam artists are able to find people to scam.
Never give out your credit card information, address, and other personal information over facebook. If there are people that are concerning to you, you can actually block them entirely from your Facebook account. You can report them as a spam user and facebook will investigate them and will even remove them from the social media site if it is found that they are fraudulent.
Don’t take the quizzes! Sure it can be fun to see if you are smarter than your friends but a lot of these quizzes are set up by fraudulent users as a way to gain access to your profile information. Anyone that creates the quiz will have access to all the information about you, which helps them to set up credit cards and offshore bank accounts in your name, stealing your identity and putting you in a very dangerous situation if you aren’t careful.