Privacy on Social Networking Sites

One of the most popular ways to socialize in today’s world is the social networking sites. It is growing at much faster pace. It has few benefits however; all social networking sites are a big threat of privacy. How to deal with this privacy issue?

By default, most of the networking sites broadcast all of your personal details which you provide while sign up to the world. However, you can prevent this, by selecting the people you want to share you details with. Here are few tips on how to protect your privacy on the social networking sites.

Twitter:

If you like to keep your updates private in a Twitter, you can do that just by changing your privacy setting. It’s that easy. You can also choose your list of friend with whom you would like to share your updates. You can do these setting as early as when you create your Twitter account. After you have filled up your details on the sign up page, it will ask for your email address so that it will search other friends of yours who are also using Twitter. Just skip this step and also skip the next step.

Photo by rohicks

When you are at the main screen of Twitter, first of all click at the Settings Tab at the top right corner of the page. Here you will find that there are numbers of settings that you can change. If you do not want to show your updates just tick mark the “Protect my Privacy” box. Whenever someone tries to follow you, you will get notification in e-mail, it’s your wish whether you want to accept or reject it.

In Twitter, you can also add person to RSS feed. This can be done by visiting the user page, you will find RSS feed link in the right hand side. You just have to right click it and copy the link and then add it to the RSS reader.

Facebook

You should be very cautious of the fake friends in Facebook. As friends have more access in to your profile than any other users of Facebook. Restrict your friend list to only the person whom you know very well.

In case you do not want somebody from your list to access your personal information, you can do that in Facebook. Just log in into your account click on friends and then go through your list of friends and choose the one you do not want in your list and remove it.

The application on the facebook is nice and is a great way to socialize as well. However, it can also be misused in some way or the other. Hence, check out the privacy policy of the applications you are using. You can remove any applications, you do not like. You can do it by choosing Applications and edit applications, then click on Remove. Click next in order to save the changes. You can also do the same in the privacy settings.

Photo by pshab

By going in to the privacy settings tab you can select people who can see your profile information. You can also set privacy settings on different portions of your profile.

You can also make your search visibility as private, which means no one outside your friend list can able to see your profile. You can prevent it by choosing the “Search” tab in the Privacy Settings and then set the search visibility to “Only Friends”. Click on Save to create this changes.

LinkedIn

You can also set the privacy settings of this professional networking site.   You can set the privacy settings about what other people can see when you visit their profiles. You just need to log in and go to Accounts and Settings and click on Profile Views. Here you can opt whether you like to show your real name. You can also hide that you have viewed their profile.

Photo by 99zeros

You can also stop the updates notifications to your friends in LinkedIn.

MySpace

To make changes to the privacy settings, first of all log in into your MySpace account. Then choose “My Account | Privacy‘. You can control whether you want to show yourself online in MySpace or hide it. You can also opt of making your profile visible only to your friends.

You can also set your block list. The block list will let you block the individual users.

Photo by frederick 2 Baro

There are hundreds and thousands of applications available in MySpace. You can absolutely block any apps from running. Just go to your “My Account | Applications’ and block it.

Social networking sites are good means to socialize with your friends. However to protect your privacy, you must know how to set your accounts privacy settings.

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