StopSign Internet Security Blog

Are you guilty of putting Too Much Information (TMI) online? Probably, right? If you’re a human who has been online more than about 15 minutes, you probably are a little guilty of the occasional TMI moment.

Putting too much information online has been a time-honored tradition since the early days of the Internet. The Usenet groups and BBS systems of the good old days of the web were a boiling mass of TMI, and the blogs and social networks of today are no different. From stories about being dooced to YouTube videos about drunk people getting caught by others acting, well, like drunk people act… the Internet gives us many examples of what not to do. But people still keep giving the rest of us too much information.

Samples of TMI include:

• Work:

  It’s not a good idea to talk trash about your boss, much less putting it online for the world to see. Avoid this TMI no-no and avoid waiting in line for your unemployment check.

• Home:

  The last thing you want is for your spouse to know that you do, in fact, think that she looks fat in that dress. This TMI tip keeps you out of the dog house.

• Friends:

  What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas, and a TMI slip up getting back home just might force you to find a new best friend. Or maybe a new place to live.

• Family:

  Venting online about people like your neighbor or your your Mother-In-Law on Facebook may seem like a good idea. Unless you forget that they follow you on Facebook, or that someone they’re close with follows you. Do that and you could have some awkward conversations in your near future.

• Strangers:

  A potentially dangerous example of TMI is anything that tells people where you live or when you’re going somewhere on a trip. You may as well put a welcome sign out for crooks.

• Personal:

  Possibly the worst kind of TMI, nobody wants to know about what happened in your bathroom or in your bedroom. Just don’t do it.

Keeping the aforementioned in your head and not on your blog or Facebook page will do wonders to keep your family, friends, and co-workers from being exposed to too much information.

If you’re looking for a site that really puts the “social” in social media then look no further than Twitter. In our experience the majority of people on Twitter are super friendly, but every now and again you’ll run into a creep who feels it’s his or her mission in life to make you miserable, whether it’s harassing your or sending you spam. It’s usually enough to block unwanted Twitter followers, but some people step over a line and you might need to do more than just block them from your account.

We’ve come up with a list of 10 Twitter safety tips to help you avoid the less-than-scrupulous people and navigate around some of the other hassles that come with social media.

• Keep personal info personal.

  Don’t share any personal information like telephone, email address, the location of your home, etc. The more you give out, the more likely you’ll find yourself with a cyberstalker, and we feel that this is an especially important Twitter safety tip. Also, be careful with any geolocation service you use (even Twitter’s own), and never tweet your location from home!

• Careful who you follow.

  It’s not necessary to follow everyone who follows you. First off it’ll start to clog up your Twitter feed when you have hundreds or thousands of followers, but secondly you’ll open the door to people who are looking for an easy mark instead of a new friend. Follow, and be followed, with caution.

• Beware of phishing.

  Phishing attacks make their rounds through DMs (or “Direct Messages”) all the time. Before you respond to a DM, make sure it’s legit.

• Only use trusted Twitter apps.

  Limit which Twitter applications you use, and try to only use those which use the OAuth method of connecting to Twitter. And before you give a Twitter application a thumbs up to connect to your account, do some quick research and make sure that any app you use is reputable.

• Strong password, secure account.

  Change your password regularly and use a strong password. This is probably the easiest, as well as one of the most effective, Twitter safety tips we can give.

• What did you click on?

  Shortened URLs are great for keeping in the 140 characters, but that makes it harder to tell where the link takes you. Some Twitter clients, like TweetDeck, allow you to preview the destination URL before you click through. There are also several Firefox addons that will reveal the final destination of a shortened URL. And if worse comes to worse, you can always add a “+” to the end of any bit.ly URL to see its information page.

• Don’t believe everything you read.

  Mama always said there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and it goes doubly so on Twitter and other social media sites. Scammers and spammers abound, and they’d love to get their hooks on you, so be wary of any offers, contests, or messages that promise the world.

• Parental guidance suggested.

  Parents need to educate themselves about Twitter and pass that knowledge to their children. We recommend that parents set limits on when their children can use Twitter, as well as appropriate ages to use social media without parental supervision.

• Report threats and cyberbullying.

  If you receive a threatening message on Twitter, contact your local law enforcement agencies as well as Twitter support. Cyberbullying and harassment is a growing problem online, and there’s no good reason to stand for it.

• Don’t go it alone.

  A tweetup is a great way to meet local tweeps, but do it smart. Never arrange to meet someone alone in real life through Twitter. Always go with a friend, and in a public place.

Using these Twitter safety tips should help keep you less likely to be bothered with the down side of social media and enjoy the great things that Twitter has to offer.

You don’t need us to tell you how important online safety for your family is, especially if you have kids still living at home. Local and national news sources help illustrate this point almost every day with stories about online scams, Internet perverts, and worse. But today we’re going to help you prevent any more of those stories by giving out some basic online safety tips for you and your family.

With the proper guidance, you can help make sure that you’ve done everything you can to help your kids surf safely on the Internet. Take a look at the list we’ve compiled below and see if there’s anything here you haven’t tried yet.

1. Always sit with younger children when they’re online. Keep a few bookmarks that they can easily access to get to kid-friendly web sites.

2. Help your kids create fun online nicknames that don’t give away personal information.

3. Keep any computers that are connected to the Internet in an open area where your children can be easily supervised.

4. Ensure that your kids aren’t sharing personally-identifiable and/or sensitive information with people they meet online. Examples of info to keep private include:

   • his/her real name,

   • the physical address of their home,

   • whether or not their parents, guardians, or other responsible adult are home,

   • any phone number (home or cell), or

   • passwords.

5. Let them know that it’s not OK to use the Internet to gossip, cyberbully, or threaten anyone online, even if they mean it as a joke.

6. Let your children know that it’s OK to tell you if something (or someone) on the Internet makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened.

7. Make sure they know it’s never OK to meet an online friend without parental permission.

8. Set clear rules for appropriate Internet use. Things you should consider are the types of web sites that are off limits, specific Internet hours, and what (if any) information can be shared online.

9. Talk to your children about what web sites they visit and who they’re chatting with.

10. Talk with your kids about computers and be open to their questions.

The online safety tips we’ve listed above are a good starting point for any family with children who are old enough to use computers, but they are by no means an exhaustive list. Monitor how much your kids use the Internet, see what’s working and what isn’t, and stay involved.

If you think we’ve missed anything, or if you have a story about how your family talks about online safety, please leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

With over 400 million active members at the time of this post’s release, half of which log in at least once per day, Facebook is at the top of the web site food chain. With numbers like that, chances are that if you’re reading this post you’re also a Facebook member, and if you are, there have been a lot of changes in the last few months with regard to Facebook account settings that you may not have updated recently.

You may have updated a few settings when you first set up your Facebook account, but it’s a good time to review what your current settings are and make any changes necessary. We’d like to show you 3 things you can change, update, or do to make your Facebook profile safer and help ensure that only the information you want people to see can be seen.

1. Account Settings:

   It all starts with a good password. Since Facebook allows you to store a lot of personally-identifiable information, it’s even more important to ensure that the password you use to access Facebook is strong, unique, and known only by you. If you’re not sure how to create a strong password, check out our blog articles “12 Tips for Making a Good Password” and “Bionic Passwords: Better, Stronger, and Faster“.

   To change your Facebook password, click on Account > Account Settings > Password. You should then be prompted to type in your old password (as a safety precaution) and your new password.

2. Privacy Settings:

   The Facebook privacy settings page has 5 different sections that you can modify, each of which we’ll discuss separately below. For specific details on each section see the actual page itself.

   • Profile Information:

     This section allows you to determine who can see information like your birthday, photos, posts, comments, and information of that nature.

   • Contact Information:

     This section allows you to determine who can see information like your cell phone, home address, website URL, and IM screen names.

   • Applications and Websites:

     If you allow Facebook applications to access your account (including games such as Mafia Wars and 3rd party tools like Twitter), this section allows you to determine what, if any, information those applications can access. You can also select what information your friends can share about you, too.

   • Search:

     This section has 2 very important settings: who can see your search results, and whether or not your Facebook page can be accessed by search engines.

   • Block List:

     Have a virtual stalker on Facebook, or just really tired of someone? You can add them to your Block List and not have to deal with them any more (for the most part).

3. Watch what information you publish:

   Think twice before publishing anything that is personally identifiable to Facebook or any other web site. Phone numbers, addresses, work locations, and schools you or family members are attending are all examples of things that you might want to keep under wraps. And if you do publish them to your Facebook friends, be sure to double-check all of your Facebook settings (noted above) to make sure that only the people you want seeing them can have access to them.

   Please be especially careful with releasing any information regarding your home address online. Making your home address public isn’t something a lot of people do, but new tools, games, and features on many new phones, web services, etc. allow you to post geolocation data like GPS coordinates, and those can be just as dangerous to make public as your address. Read our blog post “Stranger Danger: Geolocation Features and Internet Safety” for more information.

For more information, check out the official Facebook safety page at http://www.facebook.com/safety/.

Location-aware features are becoming more and more prevalent in today’s online services and tech gadgets. From GPS in the latest smart phones to adding a geolocation tag on social networking sites like Twitter or even Google, its easier than ever to let people know where you are any time of day or night. But with the ability to publicly display your location lies an inherent risk for being a victim of cyber-stalking or worse.

When it comes to technology and online services in our digital world, it’s easy to forget how all the strings tie together. As we tweet, blog, or update our Facebook statuses during the day we’re supplying everyone who can see our profiles with sensitive data regarding our day-to-day activities. From what and where we had lunch to when we’re going to bed, every time we post anywhere we’re opening our lives a little more. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but basic precautions should be taken, especially with tools that can display our location on a map.

Thinking of geolocation data as sensitive information is important not only for your privacy, but for the safety of yourself and your possessions. Because of this we recommend that, if you add geolocation info with your online posts, you exclude certain places from being published. Examples of recommended sites to exclude are:

• Your house:

  GPS data these days is so accurate that if your geolocation data is posted online it can show you not only your general neighborhood, but the precise location of your house. With a good satellite image from Google maps it’s even possible to discover what kind of car you drive and where good hiding spots are around your home.

• Where you work:

  For most people a large part of the day is spent at work. Geo-tagging from work allows anyone wishing to follow you to easily track where you are when you’re on the job.

• Schools & daycare:

  Our children are our most precious gift, and showing the world where they go to school or daycare is just about as dangerous as doing it from your home. Resist the urge to post location information when you’re waiting at the school pick-up circle.

• Vacation spots:

  We already know that tweeting can potentially lead to a home burglary, and if you add your geolocation tags to your vacation posts when you’re out of town, you’ll not only let criminals know you’re gone, you’ll let them know how long your house will be empty.

It may seem far fetched at first, but here’s an all-too-possible scenario: Person A follows Person B on Twitter, and vice versa. Person A likes to tweet a lot about everything she does during a day. On her profile Person A has a profile picture of herself, her first and last name, and the latitude/longitude of her current location updated whenever she tweets. If Person B is an unscrupulous character, he can cyber-stalk Person A to his hearts content and begin to build up his own profile on her: Where she works, where she shops for groceries, who her friends are, what her neighborhood is like, and when she’s at home or running around town. Mix in real-time geolocation tagging and he can not only follow her online, he can take his stalking to the real world.

While geolocation tools and services can add a fun, new dimension to your virtual life, you need to understand the risks of opting-in to them. Just be sure to not share any location-based information that can put stalkers close to you.