Social Media Explained

In my previous post I talked about how privacy was a modern creation, and that we should embrace the virtual “village” that social media creates. One of my readers (Tom Hume – check out his blog) pointed out that it is one thing to embrace your online community, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be smart about how you go about posting information. Here are a few tips for protecting yourself on a couple common online communities:

Facebook:

• Remove all dates – don’t post your birth year, school graduation years, etc. It can save you from identity thieves (and sneaky people who figure out your age based on the year you graduated from high school).
• Check the privacy settings on your Facebook. Specifically check under Profile Information, I personally have most of the settings set to Only Friends.
• Find out how your profile looks if someone were to search your name on Facebook (you never know when HR is going to check you out). You can test this by going to Privacy and then clicking on search.

Twitter

• Making your tweets protected defeats the purpose of Twitter in my opinion, but if you fear your ex may be reading them (or something more sinister) than go to setting and under the Account tab check off Protect my updates and then click the “Save” button. If you do this no one will be able to see your tweets unless you approve them.
• Be careful what you put in your bio, information about where you work and where you live. Something that you post that you think is innocuous could be used to locate you (just playing Devil’s advocate here). My profile never says where I live or who I work for.
• Be mindful of what you tweet, and even more so, what you retweet. Most of what you tweet is probably harmless and hopefully interesting, but if you tweet lots of “Shit My Dad Says” you could turn off a potential hiring manager or HR professional.

Here is a great article from MSNBC that really dives in to what is possible to find on a person online: Online privacy fears are real.