Posts Tagged ‘privacy’

Stay Away From Revealing Personal Identity To Social Interaction Sites

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Facebook rules the world. Okay, not really, but its influence is pretty widespread. And it certainly rules the social lives of many young people. But, regardless of age, people are growing more and more attached to social networking sites. It’s like the phone being invented all over again.

However, one must take the proper security measures to ensure their interactions online are safe and their identities are not stolen.

Always use a strong password. Make it complicated enough not to be guessed but not so complicated that you can’t remember it. Use both letters and numbers, and try a combination of capital and lowercase letters to really lock down your stuff.

Make sure you change your password. A lot. That way, hackers don’t have time to crack it. Also, you can take pride in that possibility that some hairy little nerd out there might be screaming in frustration because of you.

Also, don’t list your full birth date on your profile. Sure, you want to keep that hot doctor you just met guessing, but the more practical reason is that identity theft can occur much more easily if the thief knows when you were born. Hide it, and wait for people to ask (if they have the guts).

Use those privacy controls. Restricting people from your profile is fun; it gives you a powerful feeling. Or, at the very least, it allows you to filter and limit how much of your business is on display to the world.

Privacy controls are useful protecting your information as well as your photos. Pictures are very important to keep private, especially if embarrassing or otherwise compromising situations are depicted in them. They may be appropriate for friends, but potential employers are known to look at Facebook profiles.

You also need to worry about keeping your kids safe too. Tagging them in your photos links your page (and whatever pedophiles may have found it) to theirs. Sure, you may be only worried about your finances and identity. But the kids have more to worry about nowadays.

People who use social networking sites should always be mindful of safety. It is up to you to protect yourself. Happy networking!

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Why Online Public Records Are Usually Not Free

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Public records are, by definition, open without restriction (mostly) to the public. They often contain personal or private information. The government has designated these as public because the documents were voluntarily disclosed, or because the actions of the various agencies require disclosure.

Government agencies at all levels, from local through state and even federal, keep public records. All of these records are supposed to be free because they were disclosed for the purposes of public access.

Suppose you need a copy of a public record document. If you go to the right government agency, and simply ask for the record you want, you can generally get a copy. On occasion the agency may ask for a small fee to cover costs such as technical expenses and stamps.

Why do some online search sides charge you for access to these documents, then, if they are supposed to be free? There are several reasons.

First, some of these sites have paid the government to get the documents. They then charge you to cover their own costs.

On some other sites, the document is free but the search service isn’t. It costs a good bit of money to maintain a huge, complex database for you to search.

People who need quick access to records but can’t pay should not be worried. You can also get online access to these records for free. Try to find the right sites to use by going to a search engine and searching for “public record access free sites.”

You can also find websites to government agencies that allow free online access to records. Some other sites maintain databases of free records. These are generally smaller though than the sites that will charge you.

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