Regardless of age, online personal safety is important for many reasons. Younger people are much less aware of this fact because they’re young and trusting. To them, they have nothing to be concerned about except having fun connecting with their friends. You need to learn these helpful tips to be safe online. 

Tips to Be Safe Online

We’ve developed tips to be safe online because of our concern for your well-being and safety and the safety of your family. Let’s take Facebook for starters. You do have to tell them your birthday when you sign up because they need to know that you’re old enough to be on the platform. If you’re 10, you won’t be approved.

We strongly suggest that you instruct Facebook not to publish the year because that’s an important piece of personal information that identifies you.

Moving right along, don’t list your address. Hackers troll social media sites and it’s not because they want to be friends. And, according to research that we conducted last year, over 50 percent of the people on Facebook are fakes.

Within this group, we have hackers, stalkers, and social media assistants who manage multiple Facebook sites for clients. These assistants find multiple accounts useful.

As far as the Birthday Club on Facebook or the games, we don’t recommend joining for several reasons including:

* You will be asked for your full birthday
* Your friends may be exposed and at risk.
* Hackers, bullies, and stalkers hang out here too
* The Birthday Club wants access to use your information to contact your contacts.

The Facebook Fakes

Don’t list your exact home address, your email, or phone number. If you live in the downtown Philly area, for example, list Philadelphia Metro Area. Hackers, stalkers, and bullies troll social media sites, and it’s not because they want to be friends.

According to our research last year, over 50 percent of the people on Facebook are fakes. May be hard to believe, but it’s true within this group, we also have social media assistants who manage multiple client sites. These assistants find multiple accounts useful If they need to increase Likes and chatter.

Be Careful about the Information You Post

Your vacation or business travel plans don’t need to be made public. If you’re taking the family to San Francisco for two weeks, the Facebook and Twitter world does not need to know this. You may have read about one man who shared his vacation plans with his Facebook friends. He listed dates, times, their hotel, etc., online.

The vacation was wonderful, but the family came back to a totally ransacked house. And, by the way, his home address was listed on Facebook so it was very early for the burglars to plan the robbery.

If you want to share your vacation experience and photos, do it after the fact and not before. Most of our tips to be safe online also include Twitter. For women especially, we recommend that they approve Twitter followers rather than just letting anyone follow them.

Whether it’s Twitter or Facebook, anyone can ask to become friends or follow you. Be careful who you choose to become involved with.

Helpful Tips to Be Safe Online for Job Seekers

If you’re looking for work it’s recommended that you don’t list your home address on the resume. You can follow the same advice about your address that we mentioned for Facebook — list the general area such as New York Metro Area rather than the exact city and state. It’s OK to list your email and phone — preferably your cell phone.

Educating Your Children on Online Safety

Instruct your children and young teens about using public computers in the library, or other public places with Wi-Fi. Make it clear that they should not pay bills, check bank balances, pay credit cards, shop online, or send money via PayPal online unless they’re using their own computer that’s not connected to a public Wi-Fi. Educate your children about how easy it is for them to be hacked using any public Wi-Fi, and how dangerous it is to put yourself at risk.

Password Security

It’s also a good idea to have a serious discussion about computer password security with your children. Regardless of who they’re with, even if they are with their very best friends, passwords should not be shared with anyone.

Passwords should also be changed frequently, and it’s not a good idea to use the same password for every site. It makes it too easy to get hacked.

Passwords should be easy for you to remember, but hard for someone else to guess. Using upper and lower case letters mixed with numbers and punctuation helps to create strong passwords. Creating passwords with unusual sentences is also helpful. To cite one example: DukeTHEdogisnotAcat!!3.

There are some interesting tips in this article on passwords. Check it out here. You can also check the strength of your passwords at no charge.