Social networking – FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs – is all about opening up and sharing information, but there’s some information you should never share online. Protecting this information can help prevent everything from identity theft to your physical safety.
- Never share your Social Security Number (including the last 4 digits), birth date, home address, home phone number, and state where you were born.
- To prevent identity theft, do not disclose information that you use to answer security questions, such as your first pet or favorite ice cream flavor.
- Activate every privacy setting you can control. This includes FaceBook applications which open your personal information to outside companies that want to market to you.
- If you find someone is impersonating you, notify the site administrator so they can remove the impersonated content.
- You wouldn’t put a note on your front door stating, “Away for the weekend…returning on Monday.” Don’t let details slip that you wouldn’t otherwise broadcast.
- It is easy to set up a false or impersonated identity, including links to malicious sites. Verify that a page claiming to be from a friend actually belongs to that person before sharing too much information or clicking on links.
- Once a month, search your name and your company’s name on Google and view all public profiles on social networking sites. If you don’t like what you see, adjust your profile, settings and habits.
Adopt and enforce an acceptable use policy (AUP) that defines boundaries for employees, contractors and the company. It can help prevent data leakage incidents (loss of corporate, confidential or customer information), employees making inappropriate public statements about or for the company, using corporate resources for personal uses, and harassing or inappropriate behavior toward another employee.
Want help getting started on an acceptable use policy? Contact us.
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