Blog Post #3

Are You Protecting Your Dirt?

Normally when you think of Internet regulation, you think of the government attempting to control the flow of information and what is online. However, people need to regulate the Internet as it pertains to them.

Do you want people to dig up your dirt? I doubt so; most information posted on social sites is intended only for friends and family. “It's public, and there is a false sense of security surrounding these sites perpetuated by the environment itself,” says Ken Rogers, senior management recruiter at Trader Publishing, in an article about how online profiles affect job searches.

The United States is as Neil Swidey described “A Nation of Voyeurs.” Employers google current and prospective employees. People google their dates or significant others. Students google professors to find out dirt. Everyone searches someone every now and then.

According to a recent poll conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 26.9 percent of employers report googling potential employees.

In order to prevent all of your dirty secrets from being aired (think Miss USA and former Miss Nevada), guard yourself and self-regulate your information online.

Here are some simple tips for information posted on social networking sites:

• Do not post your full name and contact information.
• Swidey wrote, "once information gets online somewhere, it spreads so fast that it's virtually impossible for it ever to be private again."
• Use privacy settings to your advantage.
• Only allow certain people to access your profile.
• Don’t post embarrassing photos or photos of you doing illegal things.
• If a friend posts the photo, ask him to take it down. If they don’t, at least untag yourself in the photo.
• “You shouldn't broadcast or share any information that you wouldn't want to share with your parents, or that you would be ashamed of should it appear on the front page of the newspaper. Follow that and you can't go wrong,” Rogers says.

For stronger privacy settings, you can create an online profile without revealing your true identity. In David Weinberger’s “A New Small World (Small Pieces Loosely Joined),” .Zannah is someone’s web identity. She could have personified .Zannah with herself in the quizzes and lists she wrote, or it could be a created identity.

.Zannah shows how to share information and connect with other people without giving others an entryway into all your personal information. She had a homepage linked to her blog; however, her location and description was, as Weinberger described, still fairly discreet.

Why protect your information at all? To prevent ex-boyfriends (or ex-girlfriends like Amanda in Swidey's article) from getting back at you. To try and prevent cyberstalkers. To help prevent identity theft. To make sure there aren't monsters in the closet when applying for a job.

Yes, there is only so much you can do to protect yourself online. But taking preventative measures is better than believing nothing can happen to you.