As a follow-up, I’d like to discuss some general ways in which you can improve the likelihood that you will not get your personal or business systems hacked while still being able to enjoy the fruits of these dynamic, fast-growing communities.
- Think before you click on anything asking:
- for access to your personal information (on various sites, they may be called “applications”, games, “e-cards”, “gifts” like a virtual cup-of-coffee, virtual bouquet of flowers, a snowball). Do you trust the requestor? Do you even know their privacy policy?
- you to install some “missing piece of software” (e.g., a dll, driver, codec) and perhaps offering to forward you to the site where you can install it now and then proceed with your original task. Do you know the software provider?
- Review your privacy settings periodically, there are many recommendations in this regard in the mainstream media (see table at bottom).
- When the social network provider notifies you that their privacy policy has been changed – READ the new privacy policy! There have been cases where the provider has retroactively instituted new default access rules rendering previously private parts of user profiles open to the public!
- Don’t lend the use of your computer (laptop, desktop) to anyone that might be reckless with it. If the borrower surfs to an infected web site and your account on the PC becomes infected then they have unwittingly put your personal information at risk. To mitigate the danger – always create a separate account for other users (either one account per person for regular users, or) a shared guest account for people that just want to use a browser for short time. When creating such accounts do be sure they are not endowed with any administrative powers. Delete all the files they leave behind and perform a virus/spyware scan. Don’t think of it as being distrustful, think of it as good hygiene.
- Taken to its logical extreme, you might seriously consider having a completely separate system for when you are working on your high privacy stuff (employee personal info., online banking, personal/business financials, tax returns, medical bills/records, …). This will almost guarantee that your private information stays that way. **
Although it may sound like I need to lighten up, if you read some of the horror stories about people that have experienced ID theft, you may decide I am not being adamant enough! Of course, you have to find a happy medium for your circumstances. Hopefully, the list above will help you make more informed decisions before you click.
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Site Policy |
Privacy Recommendation |
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High level: NY Times Very detailed: AllFacebook | |
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For better privacy control, switch from profile 1.0 to profile 2.0. MySpace recommendation | |
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Walk-through: Network World LinkedIn recommendation | |
** If you are computer savvy enough to know about virtual machines (VM) – you can get much of the same degree of isolation using a separateVM, instead of a separate piece of physical hardware.

