OUR VIEW: Be careful what you do and put online
There’s something kind of nice about the way amazon.com and other websites can magically suggest books, movies and games you might enjoy based on items you’ve already purchased. It’s also a little bit endearing how Facebook and Gmail will dot your homepage with ads tailored especially for you. Endearing until you realize that your age, your sex, your marital status, your religious beliefs and even your political views are all out there in the nebulous network of Internet information that is well out of your control.
When Facebook first became popular, people seemed all too eager to post whatever information they could about themselves for the world to see. As the years have passed and the Internet world has become scarier, more and more people seem to be switching to private profiles, deleting lesser-known friends, and removing some of their more personal information.
The verdict: Good job, planet.
Identity theft and information hoarding are scary stuff. Spam mail and telemarketers are obnoxious, and advertisements that seem to know what kind of food you like or what kind of people you might be looking to date are just weird. The really scary part though: It’s 100 percent our fault.
So, in the interest of not losing your job because you posted something critical about your boss, in the interest of not getting emails from kings and princes of remote African countries who want to send you 100,000 Euros if you give them your bank account number, and in the interest of not having photos of you riding a bull naked circulating around the Internet like the flu in day care center, we would like to submit the following suggestions:
Don’t post your e-mail, phone number or home address on your Facebook page.
Don’t tweet about your weird habits and total lack of work ethic the week before you apply for a job.
Don’t fill out fishy online surveys that promise to tell you your I.Q. and the name of your soulmate.
Don’t post questionable photos of yourself doing questionable things in questionable circumstances (it may make you look questionable).
Do change your Facebook page to the private setting to avoid creepers and information-collecting programs like Spokeo.
Do create complicated passwords that aren’t easy to guess, and have a different password for each account you create.
Do limit the content you put on any given page – remember, once it’s out there, it’s out there, and there’s no getting it back.
Do sign up for Netflix. It’s only like $10 a month and you can watch as many movies as you want online. This has nothing to do with Internet security.