<p>Do you prefer the antenna earrings or the radar necklace, samurai?</p>
<p>I think the antenna earrings look better with my face. How about you? </p>
<p>LOL!</p>
<p>I am also partial to the earrings, but with a v-neck top, the radar necklace really pops</p>
<p>I will have to keep that in mind. :D</p>
<p>What kind of handbag would you think goes well with tin-foil?</p>
<p>why, a stealth, of course</p>
<p>Make sure your student’s email and phone number is not visible (security options, custom, only me). Birthdate is questionable, but certainly not the year. Make sure she has email notification set to let her know when anyone tags her in a picture. She can look at the picture immediately and untag if she doesn’t want it tied to her. Check the page often. Kids post the most unbelievable things on ‘friends’ pages. That’s what delete is for. It is a public forum no matter how tight security settings. Make sure the search setting is to friends only. Uncheck all boxes showing what information friends can share. When they use applications that harvest friends information, your daughters will be unavailable. Stay away from applications, games, ‘my top friends’. All of these things allow access to information to the developers. There is a box that needs to be ‘unchecked’ that shares information with google. When photo albums are added, each one must be set for friends only.</p>
<p>The WSJ has had several articles regarding security over the last year. They will walk you through many of these things. You have to understand that each time a new facebook feature is added, the default will be a more global security setting. You must ‘opt-out’ instead of ‘opt-in’. It’s a matter of staying on top of what fb is doing.</p>
<p>Contrary to the above, my students do have fb. I help them keep track of settings. It’s too much of a pain. I have usernames and passwords for all. It can be useful. Your student needs to keep in mind that it is very public and even once erased, it’s never really gone. Fb keeps everything. Even if you delete your account, you can log on a year later and ‘presto’ there you are with everything the same as it was. Once it’s out there, it’s never really gone. Seventy percent of employers now admit to looking at social networking sites to look into prospective employees. Security settings are child’s play to a company that wants information on you.</p>
<p>Ghostbuster, I have plenty of close friends, but I also have lots and lots of non-close friends with whom I very much enjoy being in touch: for instance, former students or classmates, or colleagues in different parts of the country, or people I know casually from church or in my various hobbies. I might send such people a Christmas card but I would probably never pick up the phone and call them spontaneously. In many cases, interacting with these people on Facebook has been an opportunity to get to know them better.</p>
<p>You can protect yourself on Facebook by setting your privacy settings appropriately and by not posting embarrassing material.</p>
<p>I’ll echo the above. My kids have been advised not to use any of the applications/games/whatnot, and do have themselves set to “offline.”</p>
<p>When you add an application, there is almost always a box that informs you that you are giving the developer access to your information. I tell the kids that anything that requires that, back out, don’t click on it.</p>
<p>Also, it’s useful to know that you can hide that silly stuff from your news feed. If “everyone else” is playing Farmtown or whatever, you can hover over the upper right-hand corner of the news item in your feed and there will be an X. Click on that and you’ll be asked if you want to hide the person (nothing from that person will show in your news feed) or the application (nothing from Farmtown will ever show in your newsfeed again).</p>
<p>I respect the choice many have made to be on fb, but the tinfoil hat jokes about people who choose not to social-network are unnecessary, I think.</p>
<p>As some have posted here, the “security settings” aren’t nearly as protective as you may think. I’ve been told that it takes very little sophistication to hack around them.<br>
Our Chief of Police said in his mind, fb (with or without security settings enabled) is like leaving your house unlocked. Maybe nobody will waltz in and look around your personal stuff. Maybe, if they do, they won’t take anything. Maybe if they do take something, it will be something you can afford to lose. But maybe not.</p>
<p>Bottom line, he has two kids in college and one in hs. He gave them the choice about fb usage…after telling them about cases his force has been involved in. All 3 are non-fb users by their own choice. I emailed one of his college sons to ask whether not using fb at college has put him at a disadvantage, and he said, "No way…everything the university or profs or club organizers put on fb is also available through other channels for non-fb users. He said last year several of his friends shut down their fb pages for a variety of reasons. </p>
<p>I don’t believe one has to get on the fb bus or be left in the dust. The jury is still out on how prevalent this trend will be 5-10 years from now.</p>
<p>momofsongbird,</p>
<p>the tinfoil hat jokes weren’t meant as a slam.</p>
<p>We get those comments on the Elections forum, all the time. Just a lighthearted attempt at humor. Sorry if they offended you.</p>
<p>momofsongbird-</p>
<p>There is a large difference between those simply choosing not to use social network, and the content of post # 11 (which seems a <em>tad</em> over the top, and a bit on the paranoid side by the posters own admission.). Tin foil hat humor has been used a lot on cc over the years. </p>
<p>** cross posted with samurai-- you said it better than I did-- we were being light-hearted, not mean-spirited.</p>
<p>Anything put out on any of these bulletin boards is out there for people to find.</p>
<p>Well, to be honest, they did offend me. Thanks for the apology. Accepted. :)</p>
<p>So does that mean we can’t talk about the appropriate matching shoes, samurai ? 
;)</p>
<p>btw, momofsongbird-- please note that the first silliness about tin foil hats (which as samurai explained is a reference back to that dark and scary place, the political forum), had a “jk” notation. We are just being silly :)</p>
<p>Don’t get me started on shoes, jym. My feet are simply too big for cute shoes, much to my chagrin! </p>
<p>I am not sure if Jimmy Choo has a metallic version. But they would be cute! ;)</p>
<p>Well, there is a fb group called “I have big feet” with 1459 members, and another called “I’ve got big feet but I can’t find big shoes”. It only has 19 members</p>
<p>I am SO not joining that group!</p>
<p>Lol. Sounds like a fun bunch, and they have lots of tips on where to buy shoes.</p>
<p>Do not allow them to sign up using their full name. They can use a variation of their last name or first name but not both. Also, have them limit the networks which they are involved with. The larger the network the more exposure they have to people the do not know. This is less an issue now that they have changed the network settings but still it’s wise to not join every network you see. Inform them that FB settings are always changing to DENY you privacy. For instance, every time you like something it can show up in a search some place. This is new. I have hundreds of “likes” which I’m thinking of deleting due to the change in privacy settings.</p>
<p>Lastly, impress upon them that nothing they post on the internet is truly private. It can be forwarded, copied and pasted, and duplicated with the press of a button.</p>
<p>I have to say that H and I have a fundamental difference on this. I don’t use fb and as I said prev., I monitor the kids privacy settings. H has connected with friends from hs and college, uses app/games (grrrr!), and has birthday, phone, and email. It would shock you if I told you what he does for a living. Of all people, I’d think he would be concerned. He’s not. We have argued about my requests to remove private information. I got sick of chasing our information online, putting in requests to be removed from lists, knowing the information was obtained legally via fb and would pop up again w/i a month. Some people simply don’t think it’s a risk. Very, very frustrating.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that privacy is a thing of the past. There simply is VERY little privacy. It isn’t just facebook- it’s whenever you mail order something, rent a vacation condo, sign up for a drawing- whatever.</p>