Friend of a friend of a: These "friend-of-a-friend sites" build upon the concept of traditional social networks where you are connected to new people through people you already know. Some sites are purely social while others establish business connections. They encourage you to provide information on yourself and offer forums, chat rooms, e-mail, instant messenger, etc. Most who use the sites pose no threat, but malicious people like the personal information they offer.
Hoard info: Tell your kids not to post personal information that would make them vulnerable: their addresses, class or sports schedules or recreation routines. If their connections post information about them, make sure they don't have more than you would like strangers to have.
Public Inter-place: Remind them the Internet is a public place — a resource they should not use to post things they would be embarrassed about everyone knowing — including info and photos in profiles, blogs and other forums. Remind them
the information posted "will never go away" — even if they remove things from a site, saved or cached versions still exist on other people's computers.
Be wary of strangers: The Internet makes it easy for people to misrepresent their identities and motives. Limit the people who are allowed to contact your children on these sites. When interacting with people they don't know, ask them to be cautious about the amount of information they reveal and not to agree to meet any net pal in person.
Trust no one: Tell them to believe nothing they read online. Strangers routinely post false or misleading information on most topics — especially their real identities.
Privacy settings: The default settings for some sites allow you to see your kids' profiles. Insist on customizing their settings to restrict access to just certain people. There is always the risk even this private information will be exposed.
Anti-virus software: Anti-virus software recognizes most known viruses and protects your computer against them, as long as you accept changes and updates to the software as it is forwarded to your computer over the Internet. Such software is able to detect and remove viruses before they can damage your data.
