Internet Safety Rules

It's no secret that the internet has taken over the world. Millions of businesses depend on it to do the simplest of tasks, like advertise or get in touch with customers.

Then you have social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and so many others. You can create an account and stay in touch with all your friends and make new ones all over the world! But, of course, there is the dark side to this. It's not exactly clear why, but some people thrive on hacking into accounts, (whether the accounts belong to strangers or friends), and that means you have to be careful what information you put on your account and how you update it.

To help you figure out what steps you need to take to keep hackers away, I've come up with a few internet safety rules in two steps: Prevention (to keep your account from being hacked into), and Action (for when someone has hacked into your account). You might not see it important to follow these steps, but hackers can use anything as small as your birthday and location to steal your identity.

Prevention:

1. Use a unique password. Make sure to include varying numbers and letters, such as "ninjas6245butterfly122hijack" or anything else you come up with. NEVER use your name, email (like tinkerbell from tinkerbell445@hotmail.com*) or any other part of personal information. Be sure to also use long words; the shorter the word, the simpler to hack.

2. Never include your full birthday on your profile. Sometimes, for registration, you have to use your full birthday to verify your age, but use privacy settings to only allow the month and day of your birthday to show, never the year. Remember, simply having your full birthday, like June 23, 1922, is all hackers need to steal your identity.

3. No identifying pieces of personal information, like your location, email, or phone numbers. If your friends want your email to send you that awesome link to a Cracked article, you can send them a private message.

4. Don't forget to change your passwords often. The longer you have "sweetie22" as a password, the simpler it is to hack. It's like when you're trying to connect to someone's WIFI and they have it password protected: you make random guesses until you finally get it right. I personally suggest once every two months, while some experts say every three months. Just make sure to write down the new passwords so you don't forget!

5. Check your accounts often. Read any changes to the TOS (Terms of Service) and look for any deletions, additions, or changes to your profile that you didn't make.

These rules are easy to follow, but there are truly skilled hackers out there, so no matter what you do, they will hack into your account. In that case, here are the steps to follow.

Action:

1. Contact the site you're using. They may have deleted your widget because it doesn't pass the TOS or it's invalid for other reasons. But if your account really has been hacked, let them know your account has been hacked into and they can do some investigating into it.

2. Change your password immediately. This is a simple step to possible stop the hacker, but it may not be enough. In that case, the third step might be the only effective one.

3. Delete your account. Some sites like MySpace require you to verify through email, so make sure you never skip a step and you do the full deletion.

With the ever-growing amount of technology in this world, chances are if you ever create an internet account on a site, you will be hacked. But if you follow the simple prevention steps, you can lower your chances of someone else accessing your account.

*Let me know if I used your email, and I'll change it to something else.

Photo Sources:

Picture 1: http://www.internetsafetyrules.org

Picture 2: http://www.gm.tv