This guest post was written by Sam Chapman, an Austin real estate agent,
who has lived in the Austin-Lake Travis area since 1987.

This post has nothing to do with Austin real estate, but it has everything to do with Internet use habits, safety and your future.

Facebook and other social networking sites can be awesome, but did you know you could be placing yourself at risk?  If you are not careful with your privacy settings, with what you post or if you add people as friends without knowing them, you could be setting yourself up for trouble.

Imagine posting that you are about to spend 5 days in beautiful Hawaii.  Cool.  Your friends will be jealous and everyone will be looking forward to seeing photos that you will post when you get back.  Imagine coming back from Hawaii and finding that your house had been burglarized.  How could this happen?  Someone shady was lurking on Facebook and saw your post.  The crooks found out where you live and hit the house when you were gone. 

Parents, you need to know what your kids are doing online on sites like Facebook.  Make them add you as a friend so you can see what they are posting.  Not that you are going to hang out and read everything they post, but an occasional check would be very wise.

Make sure you know who can see what.  To check or change your Privacy Settings, log in to Facebook and look for the Account tab at the upper right part of the page.  Click on Account and find Privacy Settings.  Click that, then Profile Information and make whatever changes you need to make.  Go back to Privacy Settings and click Contact Information.  Again, make any changes you feel are necessary.  Do the same for other Privacy Settings and you’re done.

Teenagers, college students and people new to the work force need to be careful about what they post.  Believe it or not, employers visit sites like Facebook.  Do you want a future employers seeing a post about what you did at a party or about skipping classes to go to the lake?  Also be careful about photos you or your friends post.  If you see one that is particularly unflattering, ask to have it removed. 

Also, beware of any post or private message from a “friend” who is in distress.  People can hack users identities and post about having been mugged while out of town and needing money.  This is actually more common than you might think.  How do hackers steal someone’s Facebook identity?  Probably through a phishing email.  This is a great reason not to have one password for multiple online accounts.

There are other Facebook threats as well.  If you see something that looks suspicious, take a careful look at it.

From Kathleen: Interestingly enough, I just got this article in a newsletter from my Spam block vendor.  Kinda scary.