Protect your privacy on social networks

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Social networks are built on the premise of sharing, but often users post personal information such as birth dates, phone numbers, addresses and employers on their social network profiles without realizing that they may be "sharing" this information with people they don't know - people that may be able to access this information if users don't take measures to protect their information.  For instance, if any of your Facebook privacy settings are set to "everyone"  then it can be found by anyone on the Internet (including potential and/or current employers).

Take a few minutes to read the privacy policies of any social networks of which you are a member and find out the steps you need to adjust the privacy settings of your social networking profiles to a level you are comfortable with and safeguard your personal information.  Here are some links with tips on how to adjust privacy settings on some of the most popular social networks:

• How to Change Facebook Privacy Settings
• 5 LinkedIn Privacy Settings You Need to Know
• Control privacy on MySpace
• Privacy Settings and Safety Tips for Socializing on Twitter
• How to Tighten Your Google Buzz Privacy Settings

See also:

• Connect Safely | A Parents' Guide to Facebook
• Facebook Safety Center
• MySpace Safety, Security and Privacy
• How people monitor their identity and search for others online | Pew Internet & American Life Project

Social Media: What is social bookmarking?

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Wikipedia defines social bookmarking as " a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.

Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favour of or against its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, 'the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content.'

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine."

Check out some of the many bookmarking sites available to help you share resources with friends and colleagues - many of them have applications that allow you to post your bookmarks on Facebook :

• Delicious
• Digg
• Fark
• Google Buzz / Google Bookmarks
• Newsvine
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Twitter (of course!)
• Yahoo! Buzz  / Yahoo! Bookmarks