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People from all over the planet do enjoy using social networks for lots of reasons. Social networks are vast websites where people can meet new people and befriends them. Once done, you can keep in touch with them via statuses, photos, blogs, messages, and more. Lots of people do use social networks like MySpace, Twitter and Facebook on an almost daily base. Millions of PC users are part of those social networks and each day, more and more people are joining them. Because of such popularity, all those sites are being used by cybercriminals. Those bad people will try many ways to spread viruses, steal people’s personal infos and to do online crime. This is due to the fact that users generally trust social networking websites a hundred percent.

If you are a user of such websites, you should take steps to protect yourself and your system from malicious activity that may be going on these websites. Even if there are generic principles that can apply, it is widely known that professional antivirus software can monitor for malicious software while the PC user continues to work, offering an immunity that you would otherwise not have.

Even if the above mentioned methods are professional and reliable, manual protection methods are also required since social networking can proof to be a high risk factor for most PC platforms. The following steps can be used to achieve such a method:

·    Double check what exactly you are making available on the internet– Anything like pictures or videos or personal infos that might compromise you after should not be published. Photos and videos that demean you as a person are also not recommended.

·    Be careful who are your online friends– Always verify that people you are connected to on social networking sites are people that you would associate with in real life. Do not add up friends just for the sake of having as many as possible. Some might turn out to be hackers or psychopathic stalkers. You want to stay away from those people.

·    Your infos should not be visible by every people on a given network– Those social networks have options where the friends of your friends are indeed able to see all your personal infos. This is of course can be turned off. Do not allow this, set your profile information so that it is not shown to anyone other than your friends.

·    If you do receive unverified messages, do not reply to them or follow any instructions part of them– Cyber criminals will send messages with some spyware as attachments. You might believe those messages are coming from the development team on your social network, while in fact they are not. Be extremely cautious if the message instructs you to download and install certain applications. Be aware that this is some kind of trick by cyber criminals to install on your PC some malware or related programs.
·    Do not post when you are leaving on vacation to public profiles.  If you don’t do that, potential criminals might raid your house the moment you’re away.

To have a great and safe online social networking experience, you should do the previous steps as part of your online routine. They will help the social networks to stop those cyber criminals. This helps everyone by making their social networking experience safer and more enjoyable.