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" \nYou Friend Anyone You wouldn&amp;#039;t let strangers into your house and give them access to your personal things. Yet that&amp;#039;s kind of what you&amp;#039;re doing if you fully friend them on Facebook \u2014 or leave your MySpace page public \u2014 and let them see photos, day-to-day details, and the other names on your friends list. &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t know someone in real life, don&amp;#039;t friend them at all,&amp;quot; says Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy and security lawyer. And be wary of fully friending a person you only kinda-sorta know, like a guy you chat with at work. &amp;quot;He can copy your info onto his own Website or distribute it via e-mail,&amp;quot; says Aftab. The upside to restricting your page: You&amp;#039;ll come off as mysterious. You Pick an Easy-to-Guess Password Don&amp;#039;t use your middle name, your pet&amp;#039;s name, or another common password to log in to your page. If you do, any random acquaintance who knows or can guess what these are could log in and pretend to be you, sending messages that are hurtful to others and detrimental to your rep, says Aftab. Instead, choose something less obvious, and don&amp;#039;t share it. You Post Pictures of Yourself Partying Hard &amp;quot;Almost all big employers now look up young applicants on Facebook or MySpace to see if anything surfaces that may indicate the person isn&amp;#039;t a good hire,&amp;quot; says Aftab. So restrict access to any suggestive photos...or don&amp;#039;t post them at all. &amp;quot;Even when you use the privacy controls, photos can still be tagged and copied onto another site,&amp;quot; says Aftab. &amp;quot;If your name is attached, anyone who Googles you will see them.&amp;quot; You Update Your Status and Say Where You Are The status update is a fun Facebook feature. And though letting your friends know you&amp;#039;re going to a specific club for the night or leaving for vacay tomorrow seems innocuous, you&amp;#039;re essentially telling everyone your location and when you won&amp;#039;t be home \u2014 setting yourself up to have someone come by your social event unexpectedly or burglarize your apartment, says social-media expert Ryan Hupfer, with PhotoCrank in Palo Alto, California. You Make Identifying Details Public Posting a cute photo of yourself in front of your house, with the street number in view, lets anyone with access to your page know where to find you. Another reason to never post your name, address, or date of birth is to avoid identity theft. &amp;quot;With these details, a credit-card account can be created in your name,&amp;quot; says Anastasia Goodstein, founder of Ypulse, a generation-Y marketing Website. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/advice/a2608/before-you-go-on-facebook/>