Keep all your personal details safe

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 450.

Protect yourself from strangers online

Stay Safe

In life there are certain common sense rules we follow in order for that to remain the case, those same rules apply when you use social media to share information online.

How you treat a stranger online should be the same as how you treat someone you don't know in real life. In real life you would not invite just anybody into your home and allow them to look through your personal possessions.

If a stranger sends you a friend request via your social network and you accept, then you should be aware that you are allowing them to see your personal information – your status updates, friends, photos and videos.

Just as in the real world you might be more inclined to communicate with a friend of a friend, on social networks you can check if someone has friends in common with you, before you consider adding them as a friend.

You should also protect yourself with a strong password. A combination that includes numbers and capital letters work well. Keep it secret and keep it safe. It is also worth mentioning that, both online and in real life, when someone comes to you with an easy way to make a lot of money they are probably just after your money.

Protect Your Privacy on social networks

A birth date is just one fact of many that a person could find out from viewing your profile and the personal information and photos you share online with social media.

Now, it's often not a problem to share personal information with close friends and family, however you would not want a stranger to find out your date of birth, address and phone number.

Fortunately in social networks you can control the privacy settings and only allow friends, or friends and friends of friends, in your social network to see your full profile and everything associated with it.

Ultimately it is up to you how much or how little you put online and who you do or do not wish to view it.

If you have children or grandchildren you should be extra careful in checking what they are putting online and who can see it.