Safety In Social Networking

Millions of people are engaged in social networking these days using services like Facebook, Orkut or twitter. Even though these website strictly work on safety of users, there are something that we as a user of these services need to consider. Here I’m posting short check list of what not to do on social networking.

If you’re using Orkut, Facebook or other social network then :

1) Don’t join groups/network/community on these sites which are discussing or spreading information regarding Racism, drugs, alcohol or Nudity.

2) Don’t accept friend request from strangers or from person about which you have very limited information. (For girls especially, plenty of female-chasers, perverts are hunting for victim on such sites so be careful).

3) Don’t post your phone number, address or personal information in any of these networking sites. Don’t even share your habits or problems or purposely point your family member’s accounts on social networking sites.

4) Don’t do any personal attack or debates if you disagree with some point on any community/group/network. Simply supportively elaborate your view or ask message poster to clear his perspective about that point.

5) Don’t allow your Scrapbook or Profile’s inbox to be a land of spammers. Set the settings in such a way that you can get messages/scraps from your friends only.

6) Don’t click on the website links which are massively spammed on groups/communities or network. If you’re unsure about links then paste those links in mcafee site advisor or phishtank service.

7) Don’t use the JavaScript code posted in the Orkut/Facebook or any social networking site. Using such scripts may affect your browser or even sometimes embed spyeware on your computer.

8) Don’t use unofficial themes (for Orkut) which are not in official theme repository. Don’t use the applications (Orkut/Facebook) which are not recommended or featured by Orkut /Facebook.

9) Don’t believe in every profile picture or user’s biography always, not everything you read about someone is true. Even though most of time it is true, why take chances?. Just learn to keep distance with strangers.

10) Don’t fall victim to those employment & help-me, get rich scams, most of the times some people use your email address or personal info for identity theft or to sell it to other spammers.

11) Don’t use free-untrusted proxies to surf these social networking sites. This might be security risk as they might log your username & password, or hack your account. If possible pay for SSL based Reputed Proxies and use them