Social Network Privacy: Do a Little Spring Cleaning on Your Online Profiles

With Charlie Sheen all over the internet and news this week, it brought to mind the many possibilities how one can damage and sever ties--specifically with potential or existing professional contacts.

Let me count the ways.

It couldn't be easier to connect (or wreck your career) these days with the help of the social networks. Consider the case of the Pennsylvania teacher fired for blogging about "whiny students."  It's the wild west on the internet.  The big issue, however, is that in cyberspace EVERYONE can hear you "scream." 

But who wants to spend the extra time editing their profiles?  It can be a bit overwhelming with numerous privacy options.

So where does one start? Well, if you need to tidy up your profile and online postings before a job hunt or applying for college, it might be time to Spring clean the questionable material.

Here are a few places to start the process:

Twitter

First, take a lesson from Courtney Love. Then, change your privacy settings.

Privacy Settings

Under the 'profile' link, go to 'edit your profile.' The tweets can be set to private by selecting the 'protect my tweets' option and once selected and saved, only followers can view them. If you have a public account, keep it business casual by filtering what you post. Besides, companies pay attention like in the case of the new Cisco employee from a few years back. 

Locations

From the same screen, if the 'tweet location' option is selected you can delete older tweets that might contain location information or turn this off permanently here. Get more details from the Twitter Safety help center page.

Facebook

If your relationship is rocky and you are contemplating divorce, you are not alone. According to a recent study, Facebook figures into  1 in 5 divorces within the United States (Loyola University). Could privacy settings help prevent that?   Hmm...

Privacy Settings

This tends to be a topic of contention with many because they have adjusted their options so frequently. The first place to start would be to verify your profile visibility. Go to the 'accounts' tab, then from the drop down select 'privacy settings' and then click on the 'edit your settings' link on the lower left side.

Follow the 'edit settings' next to the public search section. Control profile visibility here. If you have this option selected, your profile and all connections to public groups can be seen through search results via Google.

Next, edit your friends under the 'account' tab, then 'create a list' (example: co-workers, friends, family). Quite a task if you have several hundred friends. From this point you can edit who has access to view photo albums, status and more. To get the full list of options, check out the Facebook Privacy Controls page.

If all the above is too much, get a quick overview of your profile by using the SocioClean application for Facebook. Don't forget to remove it after you are done!

Google

Cache

Internet cache through Google or WayBackMachine can be useful for pulling up old, removed postings or content. But if you have any incriminating photos or posts (for example you were at the club last night but supposed to be at home), once the information is captured it lives on. The best way to prevent posters remorse is to NOT post. While there is no quick solution for deleting old files, check Google Support forum for tips.

Email

Accidentally launched off emails late at night and regret them the next day? Try Mail Goggles through your gmail account labs section. This feature once enabled is active late at night and on the weekends. Before you are able to send out the email, you must successfully complete a series of timed problems.

Also, if you accidentally hit "Reply All" on what was supposed to be an inside joke between you and a friend, Gmail offers a five second grace period where you can "Undo" that sent email. Just click on "Settings" and then on the "Labs" tab and scroll down to "Enable Undo Send."

While you're at it, you might also want to disable the "Default Reply All" as well.

Other Sites

Check out Spokeo.com to pull your personal information, phone number, home address and more. Scroll down to the 'privacy' link on their home page for instructions on how-to remove a listing.

Oh and one more thing. Don't forget those older abandoned profiles... ahem, MySpace!