DOs
- Use a strong password
- Use privacy settings. Insist your friends use theirs too.Only the bare minimum information should be made publically available.Make sure only your accepted friend can see what you put up
- Leaks, hacks, and privacy policy revisions are not unheard of. Don't assume what you do post IS secure, despite the settings
- Use HTTPS to connect to your social networking sites whenever possible, especially when connecting from a public hotspot
- Whenever possible, organize contacts into "categories". Most of us do this
between friends and family anyway, but from a security standpoint it might
also make sense to separate "best friends" from "person I met yesterday
afternoon - Verify friend/follower requests,links,attachtments, downloads, emails, anything sent to you. Even your trusted friends could've had their accounts hacked. Don't believe everything and download every link until you can voice-verify.
- Investigate exactly what information any third-party add-ons, games, extensions, etc. will be privy to.
- Read up on the security tips and instructions provided by the Social Network itself,
as well as what trusted security professionals and sources have to
say.
DON'Ts
- Assume that anything you put up will be revealed to the internet at large at some point, whether through hack, leak, or privacy policy change.
- Nothing is ever really gone from the internet. Even if you delete a picture from your account, it's still sitting on the site's server somewhere.
- Give away your password or use the same password for any other services. If a leak at Facebook causes your password to become public, you don't want a hacker being able to use that same password to log into your Gmail or other accounts.
- Upload anything you wouldn't want everyone to see.
