How do I explain to my students the importance of setting their profile to "private"?
If your student has a "public" profile on a social networking site, that means that anyone on the internet will be able to find it on a search engine and see the full profile. This makes them vulnerable to unwanted contact, identity theft, scams and other hazards.
Did you know?
A quarter of children in the EU who use social networking sites say their profile is set to ‘public’, meaning everyone can see it, and many of these display their address and/or phone number (Source: European Commission/EU Kids Online study, April 2011)
It's therefore recommended that they use their social networking provider's 'permission' features to control who can access their profile, personal information and contacts. They might not have considered that when they post something on their public profile, anyone can see it - friends, family, university admissions tutors, potential employers...even complete strangers.
Once they've set their profile to private, they can stay in control by using built-in features such as ‘Add friends' (to allow only chosen people to view their profile) and ‘Ignore' (to block unwanted approaches from someone in particular). They should also review their ‘friends' list regularly and remove anyone they don't want to see their profile. Please note that Facebook changed its privacy settings in May 2010, so you might want to remind your students to update their settings.
There have been several incidents where young social networking users have posted details of a party on their profile and then fallen victim to gatecrashers, so you might want to use this as an example of what can go wrong.
You could also explain to older students, who might soon be looking for employment, that many HR professionals look for information about potential candidates on the Web. According to a survey in early 2010, nearly half of European recruiters say they analyse the online reputation of candidates using search engines, social networking sites and blogs.
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