Protect your online privacy

When I googled the social network websites like foursquare, many of the article mentioned the dangers of oversharing online, and ask readers that they should consider what they’re sharing before they post it. This remained me that it is important for everyone to pay attention to online reputation management.

However, in this web 2.0 era, how much privacy could we have in social media world?

I enjoy social media very much and benefit from these variety kinds of tools, but the privacy question is a big issue for me. In order to get more followers, we share more of our personal lives and put our privacy away gradually. We may think we’re being careful enough, but the technology in nowadays is able to track our every single move in social media world and record each information we post online. Sometimes we think we just post things to a specific group, but it always has the danger that our secret information will expose to the one you don’t want them to reach, like your supervisor, or your parents. It is inevitable because people passed things from one to another.

What should I do if I want to protect my online privacy?

Firstly, we should check the privacy settings of the sites we use. I was told that "if you don't want it public, don't share it." Always remember that don’t easily put your personal information like phone number, address, id or the pictures of drinking alcohol. Secondly, we should think through who are the potential audiences for our messages before we post them, and pay attention to what others say about us and on our profiles. We could choose to post the information we would like other to know instead of posting all of them. Thirdly, if you are engaging on a website that you don’t want others know, use a pseudonym, it will be safer in this way.

If you are a job seeker, it is not necessary to be too careful and put nothing on your sites just in case that your future employers will find something they don’t like and have a negative impact on you. We all know that employers are dedicating a significant amount of time and resources to find additional information on potential candidates, so why not to take this advantage by create a positive image for you on line. Reputation management is not so hard, we should start from now on.