8 Tips to stay safe on Facebook

Facebook is the fastest growing social networking site in the world today with up to 250,000 new users being added every day. But sharing information has lots of risks including your name which can be accessed by others and your profile can be viewed. Anyone can get valuable information and private photos from your profile -- ultimately getting you in big trouble. You can keep this at minimum by following these steps.

1. Set the security settings on your profile to "Only my friends." By doing this, you will be able to have control who has access to your information and pictures. For certain pictures, you can also select certain friends that you do or do not want them to see.
2. Always monitor pictures that other people put of you and tag you on. You can see the tagged pictures of you by going to your profile and under your profile picture it should say "Photos of You" and the number of tagged pictures. Click on that, and look through the pictures. You should be able to untag any unappealing photos of you, but people still have the ability to see it. Don't hesitate for a second to "untag" yourself from pictures that you do not approve of. Simply click "remove tag" next to the name in the list of people in the picture. Also if you think that the particular picture could put you in a compromising situation, consult whoever put it up and ask him or her to remove it immediately. If they are your so called pals they should comply with your request.
3. Do not post pictures of yourself under the influence of any type of substance. This refers to pictures such as: Dancing-on-the-bar pictures or candid shots of the last time you got hammered with your pals on happy hour. Don't be caught with drugs, especially if you're underage because anyone can just print out the picture and show it to your parents or principal.
4. Avoid putting your phone number, mailing address, children's or pet's names in your profile. People often use words such as pet's names or numbers as passwords, so it is not recommended to publish them on-line.
5. Never post information regarding an upcoming vacation or trip as your status. Doing so is just asking for your house to be robbed. If you must post photos and every detail of your two-week trip to France, do so after you return home, not before or during your vacation.
6. Change your password every so often. Don't make your password something obvious such as your birthday or mothers maiden name. Try to have at least one capital letter, one lowercase letter, two numbers, and a symbol. The longer and more complicated the password, the safer you are from getting your account hacked. Always remember to log out after you're finished with Facebook, especially on a shared computer.
7. Don't confuse Facebook with an on-line dating site. The purpose of Facebook is to connect you with people you know. Making you profile public means you're sharing your information with everyone, even though you don't know them, a risk that you wouldn't want to take.
8. Be careful who you friend. Don't friend anyone out of your state/country unless you know them pretty well. Only friend people you know. You can add mutual friends that you don't know if you want to, though not recommended. Only friend people that you at least know their favorite color, siblings name, pets name, or something like that. Make sure they are the correct person by looking through their pictures. If they are not familiar, then remove them as a friend by getting to your friend list. Block anyone that seems to threaten or harass you