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Online Safety

Since you're here visiting YL, there's no doubt you're someone who surfs the Web. But are you wise about staying safe while online? The Net is a great resource for communicating with others and sharing information. But when it's information about you flying about cyberspace, then it's obviously something you want to stay in control of.

Staying in control

Not everyone online could be who they really say they are. Just like in real life, you shouldn't be quick to trust people who you don't know personally.

You should consider information about yourself as precious info, and be wary about what you choose to reveal, and where and who your reveal it to. It's your information, so stay in control of it. Info you release wild on the Net could easily reach people you don't want it to.

There are lots of situations online where you might be asked to share your personal information, for example:

• Chatrooms
• Blogs and forums.
• Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook or Bebo.
• Online games

Trust no-one?
As well as avoiding giving your details to strangers online, you should be careful about trusting people you've only met online and made friends with, but never met in real life. You can't trust at face value that they really are who they say they are. With the Net being a pretty anonymous place, it's unfortunately really easy to lie about identity, including even faking images or webcam video.

We're not saying you can't make friends with people, but still keep an eye on the info you choose to reveal - e.g. don't tell them your home address, phone number or where you regularly go to hang out. You wouldn't want a cyber-stalker showing up at your front door!

Your personal info

Here are some examples of information you should keep under close control:

• Your real name. If your in a chatroom, forum or online game - basically a situation where you're interacting with strangers, then you should keep your real name secret and use an alias or screen name (a nickname or a fake name you make up to protect your real identity).
• Your email address or IM (Instant Messaging) contact details, for example your Windows Live ID, Yahoo ID, etc. You wouldn't want complete strangers contacting you. It's best not to give out these to anyone you don't know in real life. If you decide you need to give out an email address, then set up a new temporary email address and use that, rather than giving out your personal one.
• Your age or date of birth. It's best not to let other people know when you were born. For example, it's usually one of the security questions they ask on some website's when you've forgotten your password. Imagine someone knowing your name, date of birth and other stuff enough to be able to impersonate you - you wouldn't want that!
• Your phone numbers. You should only give your phone numbers out to people you know. On social networking sites, either don't put up your number or make sure that it's private so that only people you control via a friends list can see it. Other people don't need to know it - they can message you through the site if they want to talk.
• Info that can identify where you are or where you live. Don't give out your address to strangers or post it on a public site where anyone can see it. Similarly, if you write in forums or have your own blog, don't give out too much information about the exact place you are or live.
• Photos of you - once you publish a photo on the Net, then you've lost control of it. Anyone can see it, download it, edit and manipulate it without your permission. If you're planning on sharing your photos, make sure they're ones you don't mind being public. Try to limit those who can view it to the people you want, e.g. your friends - you can set private permissions for uploaded photos on most photo sharing sites like Photobucket.
• Photos that can identify personal info. As well as photos with you in them, think about what other information photos you are uploading to the Net could be revealing - don't let people see you in your school uniform for example - then strangers could know where to find you through the location of your school.

Your friends and family

As well as guarding your own personal info, you should be equally as careful about sharing information about your friends and family. They most likely wouldn't want their info being shared out of their control on the Internet either.

More information

For more advice and information about staying safe online, including other things you should look out for like spam email and phishing, computer viruses, being hacked and cyber-bullying, check out the links to other sites below.