Safety Tips for Online Forums

Online community forums and discussion boards have become very typical these days, with new ones being set up just about everyday.

However, just as entertaining and amusing these forums are, they are a security risk for everyone. The members and administrators, both. Personal information, is never safe, once it is online.

So, how do you go about safeguarding your security, while enjoying these forums at the same time?

Disclose the least possible personal information you can. As an example, try to keep your personal email address safe. Do not go about giving it to everyone, everywhere. And if forums do require your personal email address to be mentioned, look around to see if you have the facility of hiding the email address from public.

Other fields, such as street address, city of residence, and other personal information is almost always optional on most forums, so do not fill these up unless you trust the forum and its members.

Always choose difficult passwords, probably a combination of alphanumeric characters. Even though this is not related to personal information, it could be a serious risk to your online credibility if someone gains access to your account, specially, if you are an active member in many forums.

Specifically for forum administrators, choose passwords that are not only alphanumeric, but also contain symbols in them. This is an effective measure to defeat the brute forcing technique that most hackers use to gain unauthorized access to administrator accounts.

Moderators have extra power over the normal users, and can perform a greater variety of functions as opposed to normal users. So, always choose your moderators with care.
If possible, never promote any moderator/user to the administrator position unless that person is completely trustworthy.

Always disable the database editing function through your forum. This is a particularly powerful function, and anyone with access to database editing (other than the owner), could easily take over the forum.

Always be cautious. Simple pre-cautions on your part, can always keep your personal information and online credibility safe. And you can enjoy the experience of indulging in discussions online, without any fear whatsoever.