Change privacy settings to stay safe on social networking sites - Email - Internet

Social network privacy has become one of the most controversial and essential topics today. Since the creation and increasing popularity of social networking sites, the issues related to social network identity theft, sexual predators and employment are consistently on the rise. Apart from that, the rules of data storage, its management and sharing are still a big concern in the social networking sites.

When a hacker gains unauthorized access to a site’s protected coding or written language, the security issues related with it occurs and that is why social networking and privacy go hand in hand. The privacy of such interesting sites are more essential since more people are getting addicted to it and therefore the chances of falling prey to the hackers are incessantly increasing.

Whatever personal information is available-- your birthday, address, photos, status updates or any professional information; everything can get noticed by cyber criminals. Apart from providing the personal information, once you click on unidentified or unknown sites, you are more susceptible to social network identity theft.

Some of the potential threats that have hit social networking privacy are:

Identity theft- when a user provides higher levels of personal information, such as posting your social security number, you become an easy target for identity theft. Therefore, it is always advisable to protect information such as your birthday, important photographs and other information from any unidentified friends should you become an unfortunate victim of hacking.

Sexual predators- due to the high description of the personal information and the ability to hide behind a pseudo identity, such sites increasingly inviting sexual predators. In a recent survey one of the sites has evicted 90,000 registered sex offenders from its sites in the previous two years. Many such publicized cases have demonstrated the threat that resulted in so many severe crimes.

Stalking- by the use of instant messaging or clicking on to unidentified sites the number of stalking victims are increasing day by day. The alleged viewer gets to know about your address, your mailing id, precise location and other such details without knowing you thus creating a lot of havoc in your personal life.

Unintentional fame– when a number of high profile incidents occur by creating embarrassing situation to the users, unintentional fame rises as a repercussion. Some objectionable videos or information that is sometimes spread over the world widely can create lots of misunderstandings and bad reputation as a result.

Employment – the lack of social networking privacy also affects employment. Once your professional information is being misused, your job is in danger.

Considering all these threats, it is imperative to change privacy settings of your accounts regularly so that you can stay safe and protected from social network identity theft.