The web is a big place, a scary place, and a malicious place. Beyond that, its a cesspool of information about anyone, anything, and any place. Information about you is just a Google away, and there is all kinds of stuff you didn’t even know was there. If your name ever appeared in the news, or your schools newspaper, or your neighbor wrote a nasty rant about you on a forum… it’s all there and people can find it.

Maybe some of these things are out of your control. If someone posts your name on a website, in a lot of cases there isn’t much you can do about it. However, save yourself with aspects that are in your control. I’ll bet that 8 out of 10 people are members of some kind of social networking site (Facebook, MySpace, etc) and have some form of personal information on there. A small percentage of those people have A LOT of information on there (their hobbies, their friends, their job, their websites, their pictures, their videos… everything).

For the percentage of people willing to share it all, go nuts, but make sure you only share it with people you WANT to share it with.

If I can find it, we all can

There was an article on Slashdot today that said something like this: One in every five employers scanned the Internet for a prospective employees web life. Of those 20%, one of every three declined employment based solely on the information they found based on content about applicant using drugs or drinking, inappropriate photos and bad-mouthing former bosses.

How could these people have avoided being declined the job? How much time did they need to spend on the web to avoid this unfortunate turn of events? Probably about five minutes. If I walked up to you on the street and said your job was at extreme risk and you have a 33% chance of being fired, but all you needed to do was spend five minutes on the web and you could save your job, every single person would opt to spend the five minutes.

Do yourself the favor, spend the time today, like right now since you are on the web anyway, and go modify your privacy settings.

What to change them to?

Do you want to give me the password, while we are at it? Here’s what I would change them to if I were you: make it as restrictive as possible to people you DON’T know. That is, if they aren’t your friend, they shouldn’t be able to see jack about you.

Do you really want strangers to know this much about you anyway?

For instance, and I checked on Facebook just to see, I have nearly every setting set for “Friends Only.” That is, if there is a piece of information about me on Facebook, you have to be my friend to see it, with three exceptions: School history, employment history, and a single form of contact.

Do yourself the favor and do the same thing. You will thank me later.

Just one question

I can understand your want to be “that person” on Facebook or MySpace that is friends with EVERYONE. I know you need to be friends with your friends, their friends, and their friends so on down the line until you are networked with the world, but once you get out of high school and into the big kid world, you need to let those dreams go. You need to make sure that people who make choices about your future do not see information that could sway their decision.

So, as much as you had fun at the house party last weekend when you got up on the table and did a strip-tease for the crowd, or maybe you smoked an ounce of weed with your friends, or perhaps you passed out on the floor and everyone drew a penis on your face, you need to make sure that the only ones who can see this are the ones you want.

Which brings me to the one question I have: why could the world see this information anyway? Do you really want the first thing people see about you to be that you are a lush or a pothead or an idiot?