Precautions to Take When Practicing Online Social Networking

You love the online social networking that you have been doing, or maybe it’s your teenager that loves it, either way you want to be careful and use precautions when online social networking. There are some precautions you need to take for anyone that is practicing online social networking. The precautions will help keep you, your family and your friends safer.

Personal is personal-

To start out with, the precautions to take when practicing online social networking is to keep your personal information personal. This means that any information that will identify you as a real persona and not just a name on the computer. This is your personal information and should not be posted on social networking sites. The information like your full name, your physical address and the routines you have made in you life should be kept away from online social networking.

Limit viewers-

While you are limiting the information you post on social networks, you will need to take the precaution of privacy policies when social networking. There are social networks that have very strong privacy setting. Use those setting and make sure that only your friends, people that you personally know, can get to what you post. Also if new people want to be your friend, use great caution.

Make sure they are friendly friends-

The precautions you need to take when you are practicing online social networking are extremely crucial when dealing with strangers, or new friends. When you get a new friend request you need to be very careful. This may be an innocent person who is very honest, but it could be a predator looking to steel you identity of give your computer a virus. You should always scan these emails and any attachments they have before opening them. Always have your firewall on the highest you can to help prevent predators from getting to your information.

What stays posted-?

Another precaution to take when practicing online social networking is to limit what you say or post. When you put something, whether it is written word or pictures or whatever, you will want to only post what you won’t mind millions of people seeing. Online social networking is not your personal diary. Millions of people can get access to what you post. And what you post will stay online forever. You may delete it, but it has most likely gone on someone else’s computer and they will have the ability to put it online again. It never comes off.

Who would want my photo-?

One precaution to take to help prevent others from taking your photo is to distort your photos a little bit. You can do this by adding a little fuzz or smearing the photo a little. You don’t want your photos to be used by anyone you do not know.

Family and friends-

Also use precaution when you post something about your friends and family when you are practicing online social networking. You should always have your families and friends permission before you post anything about them or any pictures of them. You want to use precautions with yourself and those you are involved with when online social networking.

There are many precautions to take when you are practicing online social networking. Some of the precautions to take are, make sure you keep your personal information personal, also limit the viewers you have to your posting. You will need to be sure and set your privacy setting so that only friends can access your postings. Be careful with new “friends”, and post only what everyone you know, and a few million you don’t know, can see. Take precautions with photos and what you say or post about family and friends. If you take these precautions when you are practicing online social networking you can have a safer and better time online.