Be safe with Social Networking

Many would agree and many would disagree that social networking is a great idea. To be honest, I’m not a person that is very involved in social networking. I don’t have a MySpace, I don’t have a Bebo, I don’t have a Facebook and I don’t have a 43things. I don’t have anything to do with social networking really. I just write, as you read my blog right now, and I have an account on some forums I moderate that I am not going to disclose in this post.

Social Networking isn’t something that appeals to me. To get in contact with friends I use IM and E-mail. But one of the main reasons that I do not use social networking sites is because they give you the opportunity, and sometimes force you to type in and reveal some of your details or personal information that you don’t really want to reveal to the public. Okay, it’s possible to set your profile to private (on some sites) but I would not give out the URL to friends. I prefer to have my own blog, my own website and so on.

For instance, the person that you are talking to does not necessarily need to be who they say they are. You could be talking to someone who says they are a young sweet sixteen girl, but is really a 45 year old bloke living with his parents in their basement. They could be a pervert, they could be a sexual predator, they could be anybody or anything (a bot sent to retrieve information about people).

To be continued…