It is possible social media has enabled you to find your long lost friend, your boss and roommate in college. Possibly, you are engaging together on various issues on a daily basis. In the same token, you could be engaging them through various relationships online, whether they are past employers or sweethearts. All the information you are using to share is allowing you to ensure that you are always in touch but what you might not have thought about whether other individuals are looking at the same information or the way the same critical details and information are being used by others out there.

Building Connections

With so many social networking sites allowing you to build the kind of relationships and connections you want, the information is remotely stored and not on your secure PC. While you can use social networking sites to meet and keep in touch with a loved one and friends, you can create lots of contacts while finding as many people as possible who might have the same ideas and interests. In fact, due to the fact that we all want to be seen and admired, personal messages, videos and photos are heavily shared on MySpace, Twitter, Facebook among other sites.

These sites are becoming very popular daily and lots of users are increasing everyday. However, the risks have always increased and criminals, identity thieves, virus writers, spammers and hackers closely monitor these posts and traffic trooping to your site. This is why it is very important that you protect yourself fully while using these social networks.

Caution With Links

If there is something that could doom your social media account and PC, it is clicking all manner of links especially those you receive from presumably safe friends and acquaintances. You must treat the links to message on sites the same way you have always treated messages on your emails. Most of us never click emails and we can tell a malicious and phishing email from afar. However, this is not usually the case when it comes to social media links.

Conscious Of Your Posts

It is very important to ensure you understand all that you have posted on your social media accounts, especially about yourself. Remember that hackers will always crack the entry to your crucial online banking details by letting you click the “forgot your password” tab on most login pages. Your security questions’ answers will then be studied especially through social media and the details are connected.

Online Reputation

You must make a conscious effort to take full charge of your reputation on the web, whether on social media or not. Always ensure the message is from the individual purported to have sent it. A hacker can break into any account belonging to a person you respect and share lots of messages sent to you presumably safe but are not. After suspecting a message is not safe but fraudulent, an alternate way of connecting to the individual or friend to ascertain the authenticity of the message can be done, such as a phone call. You could save your friend a lot of headache while helping him protect his reputation.

Author Bio

Rachel is an avid social media blogger who is addicted to facebook and twitter. Recently she wrote about how she lost her access to facebook and how she recovered it with the use of Social Password Finder.