Last week I started this series regarding things you should not do online. Here is the last part starting with something you may have never thought about.
Be very, very cautious of posting online about your kids and grandkids. Say you take a picture of your kids and some pedophile sees them. Sometime later you announce what school they go to. Another time you post their teacher’s name. You talk about picking them up from practice every Thursday around 4:30. You are proud when they get their new baseball uniform and post a picture of them with their jersey number. You mention that you will be running late this Thursday due to a dentist appointment. You have just given someone a clear timeline and description of everything about the child. You have presented many opportunities to that person to cause trouble for your family. You think this is a stretch but very similar scenarios have happened across the country many times with some bad outcomes. Think very carefully about what you post.
Do not post personal plans online. For example, "My sister and I are going to see ‘Whatever Movie’ tonight at the XYZ movies." You mention the restaurant you are going to afterward. You have just informed someone that you will not be home tonight. They can probably figure the movie time. You have just given a break-in artist your home, oh yeah, and possibly your sister’s.
Do not use the same username and password over and over for various sites and accounts. If someone gets one account they now have access to all of your accounts. You say, "Come on Ron, they don’t know what online accounts I use." Oh sure, I bet you have either a Yahoo, Gmail, Verizon, AOL, etc. email account? Maybe Amazon, eBay, Wal-Mart or JC Penney online accounts? Hmm, I wonder how many banks are really close to your house. They can test online banks to their heart’s content. You can be hacked if you persist in using the same account information. It only takes a bad person a little while to figure all of this out.
Do not indiscriminately post your address and phone number online. This could cause all kinds of problems.
Not a big, "Do Not" but I highly recommend not using your regular email address for online shopping. Then when you get spammed warning you that your Amazon account is blah, blah, blah and it comes to the address you do not use for shopping you know it is junk and can be discarded. If you use one email account for personal and "business" then you have to wonder if someone has hacked your account or not.
This is the last "do not" which I am sure I will get negative comments regarding. "True love" is not always long lasting. Never share your passwords with your latest true love. That includes email, phones, banking, online stores and personal pictures. I have been married almost 38 years to the same wonderful woman and she can have all my passwords. After that long you better trust each other. But for new love, well ask the people who have been bankrupted, had phones cut off, ordered $50,000 worth of product from online stores, had their credit ruined and had nude pictures of themselves posted publicly online by their ex…after true love had vanished. I wonder if they could do it over again if they would have kept their account information to themselves.
