There are plenty of things you can do to protect your privacy when using a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook.

Sometimes the best protection is simply to be aware of the risks and take a common sense approach to looking after your personal information.

• Read the privacy policy of the social networking site
• Be careful about what information you give out
• Use the privacy tools available
• Make sure your anti-virus software is up-to-date

Read the privacy policy of the social networking site

The privacy policy of the social networking site should tell you important information, such as what the site will do with your personal information, how it will take care of it, and how you can lodge a complaint if something goes wrong.

Make sure you read the privacy policy regularly – the privacy practices of the organisation may change. You don’t want to be taken by surprise when it comes to your personal information.

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Be careful about what information you give out

Think carefully about the information you share with people on social networking sites. If you make a mistake or say the wrong thing, it can be difficult to fix the situation afterwards.

Remember that having a face-to-face conversation with friends is different to posting opinions on your Facebook or MySpace page. Words on a social networking page don’t fade away as easily as a spoken conversation. Something said flippantly or light-heartedly can hang around or be found by others for a long time afterwards.

The easiest way to protect your privacy is not to give out personal information that you don’t need to, and to think carefully about what you say online.

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Use the privacy tools available

Some social networking sites have privacy tools available. For example, on Facebook you can set your profile so it can only be viewed by friends. But normally you have to adjust this setting – it isn’t automatically set that way.

You can also restrict who can find you in searches and what appears in your search listing, and give people limited access to your profile.

Take the time to set up these privacy protections before you start networking.

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Make sure your anti-virus software is up-to-date

Whenever you use the internet, you should make sure your computer is equipped with up-to-date anti-virus software, firewall and anti-spyware. This will help protect you from having confidential information stolen (such as log-on passwords) and will generally lower your computer’s chances of getting a virus.

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