Tips for Online Safety

As social networking stretches into every corner of our lives, parents are right to be concerned about the information their children may be sharing online—and about what kind of information they should share about their own families. Here are some guidelines for safety:

• Pick a strong password. Don’t use common words or significant dates in your life. Create a password that’s a mix of letters, numbers, capital letters and lowercase so it can’t be guessed easily.
• Don’t give your birth date. Leaving your full birth date—month, day, and year—can give hackers and identity thieves an avenue to more confidential information. Share just the day and month, or no birthday at all.
• Use privacy controls. Limit what’s available on your profile so strangers don’t have complete access to everything you post online.
• Don’t announce vacations. Don’t announce that you’re going to be out of town ahead of time. You don’t want to advertise that your home will be empty.