How to use facebook safely

eMarketing Reflections

How to use Facebook safely October 2010
There are many stories of people who use Facebook and get fired or have another reason to regret using it ever. Does this mean we should avoid sites like Facebook altogether? Of course not, but some caution is absolutely necessary.

Getting fired
We have all heard horror stories about people showing all their personal photos to the world, or accounts being kidnapped to fraud your friends out of a lot of money or your house being robbed during that long holiday you announced to all your friends on Facebook. Then there is the example of a girl bad mouthing her boss, while she forgot she had marked him as a “friend” in her account. See: http://bit.ly/xymGw

Inviting “Friends”
Some people have hundreds or even thousands of “friends” on Facebook. The question is why? Maybe it is to feel popular and being able to boast how many friends they have, but how do you keep contact with these people, even with the help of social media?
The example of the girl above shows that it is better to be careful who you be-friend on Facebook. There are many other examples and the worst is the one of the Rubber duck. Someone placed a photo of a rubber duck on Facebook and asked people to be friends. Not only did a lot of people accept, but they even gave a way a lot of personal data to this rubber duck.

Read about the rubber duck test: http://bit.ly/6CwXrh
Visit the rubber duck on Facebook: http://bit.ly/7TfDsZ

My suggestion, when asked to be friends with someone, or inviting someone yourself, think twice. It is better to have a smaller group of good friends than a large number of people you hardly know and that might get you fired or worse one day.

Securing your privacy
The default settings of your new Facebook account are set to show everything you upload into your account to the whole world, as the wife of the new MI6 director in the UK found out when posting her holiday photos on Facebook. See: http://bit.ly/2jDgHP

The first thing you need to do when opening a Facebook account is going through all the settings and make sure you block any unwanted eyes from seeing your data. However, by registering you give Facebook more or less the rights of use of anything you publish on it, so be aware that no matter how good you lock your Facebook account from the world, you still might be surprised by coming across some of your data or photos anywhere online in the future.

If you think you need to reconsider the safety of your Facebook account, you can take a look at this article and read a step by step description of how to register in Facebook.