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Staying safe on Facebook

Nahid Akhter
With social networking sites springing up like mushrooms nowadays, it becomes quite difficult to fight the temptation of joining these online communities. With such an assortment served up, it's hard to decide whether it's going to be orkut, hi-5, twitter, facebook or any other.
Like it or hate it, social networking sites have become a craze now and have transformed the meaning of the word 'community'. Keeping oneself separate from the rest of the world has become almost impossible, and quite frankly, meaningless. With such a handy tool to stay in touch with friends, acquaintances and relatives, why miss out on the opportunity?
In spite of all the good things, many are cynical of these websites due to security issues. Numerous parents are very much concerned about their children joining such networks. Reaction of parents of teenagers, especially are quite mixed. On one hand, they are aware of the need for their kids to interact, but are concerned about how safe their kids will be in this open community, where they can befriend anyone they want from anywhere in the world. Many parents find the fact that you can type someone's name into the search box and it will find them, kind of creepy. Moreover, ID fraudsters target these social networking sites to harvest information about people.
Here's how we recommend you set your Facebook privacy options to protect against online identity theft.
So how does one ensure that their children and their family stay safe, and at the same time enjoy
being part of these social networks? How does one set their Facebook privacy options so as to stay protected against online identity theft? The key is to keep settings as private and limited as possible.
But first and foremost, use good judgment in planning who you will add. Your profile is like a whole book about you. It has all kinds of information about you, your interests, places you go to, your photographs etc. Adding someone on Facebook is like inviting him to come into your house and letting him see your world. Just adding anyone who has sent you a friend request will mean letting him enter your house. You wouldn't
want any stranger in would you? You can however also remove friends at any time should you change your mind about someone.
At the very bottom of every page on Facebook, there's a link that reads "Privacy." The linked page "A guide to privacy on Facebook," contains the latest privacy functions and policies. For example, with the latest changes, Facebook has reduced the amount of basic information that must be visible to everyone. Now they are giving the user the ability to control who can see his friends and pages. These fields will no longer have to be public. When in doubt, use the "Preview my profile" button on
any privacy settings page to check how your information appears to others.
Keep your friend's list organised in categories, such as 'Friends', 'Colleagues', 'Family', etc. This will make it easier to put control settings and categorise who can see what and how much.
You can choose to make people 'limited friends' who only have access to a cut-down version of your profile if you wish. This can be useful if you have associates who you do not wish to give full friend status to, or feel uncomfortable sharing personal information with.
Think about how you want to use Facebook. If it's only to keep in
touch with people and be able to contact them. It makes a lot of sense to disable an option until you have decided you do want and need it, rather than start with everything accessible.
You can even control who can find you on Facebook via search. If you do not want any known or unknown person to find you by searching your name, you can set this option through “Search discovery" option under "Privacy".
Last but not the least, how do you protect children from groups that are a bad influence? The government of Bangladesh had to recently block access to Facebook temporarily after the arrest of a youth in connection with uploading objectionable images of some politicians including the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. Local media quoted the state-run Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission (BTRC) saying that the posting of some anti-religious and objectionable links by users across the globe are among the reasons for restricting the access.
To report any group that you find proliferating offensive messages, pictures or any other content, simply click on the link “Report this group”, which will be at that bottom of every profile page and picture viewed. This will allow Facebook authorities to be informed and take necessary action against the group or person.
All said and done, if you choose not to take any precautions, then you'll only have yourself to blame when an errant wall post or unpleasant photo makes its way online and straight into your mother's News Feed, or worse, your boss's. These days, it's better to be safe than sorry, so go ahead and delve into those settings!