Internet Safety Tips for Facebook's New Timeline

This month Facebook is implementing its new replacement for a profile page called Timeline.  All of your previous posts will be collected and viewable in chronological order from when you first created your Facebook account.  For many people this could be years worth of information, not all of which they can remember ever posting.  Child and Family Services' Sexual Assault Center promotes the message of being safe not only out in the world, but online as well.  With Facebook changing to putting so much information together in one spot, we thought it'd be helpful to have a few reminders on internet safety.

Tips for your children:

• Check your child's friends list to make sure you know who they are talking to.
• Check their privacy settings to be sure only their friends can see their page.
• Check their photos to make sure they're not giving out too much information.  Most people aren't aware pictures taken with phones can have geolocating in the file, giving anyone GPS coordinates to where that picture was taken.
• Report any inappropriate behavior to the proper authorities.  If a stranger is contacting your child online there is no harm in being too safe.
• Be friends with your child on Facebook and monitor their page.  Also, be aware that it may not be your child's only Facebook page.  It could be just the one they have for family members.

Tips for everyone:

• Go through your timeline and hide or remove any material you don't want being shared
• Check your privacy settings so only people you are comfortable sharing information with can see it.  You can even make sub-groups to block certain people.
• Make sure the information you want to share is what you really want to share.  Cell phone numbers can be used to find the general area where you live.
• Remember that what you put on the internet can potentially be there forever.  Once it is out there, you have no control if someone downloads or copies it and posts it somewhere else.

It never hurts to be safe, especially when technology is making it so easy for us to connect with each other.