A for Age. Accordingly to the Consumer Reports Magazine, nearly 7.5 million kids are violating Facebook’s service terms of use, which say, that children under 13 are not allowed to register. Unfortunately, there is no functional tool to verify users’ real age. Inconceivably large group of young users lie about their age to sign up for Facebook. It’s more than one-third from 20 million minor users. Nearly 5 million are 10 or under. Where are their parents then? Survey shows that only 18% of parents of the kids 10 and younger supervise them by becoming Facebook friends. To compare, in the group of 13 and 14 years old, this percentage rises up to 62.

U for understanding social media phenomenon. Starting from the early age, kids at school learn writing, reading and counting. But the schools’ role is more than just teaching. Schools play a significant role in developing social, emotional and behavioral skills. Social media, if we make a good use of them, may play the same important role in kids’ education, as school does. Not only from the sociological point of view. These days, being digitally illiterate means to be uneducated at the same time. Since technology and social networking settled in schools for good, there is no other way to jump over it but face it. If the kids start their first school between 4 and 6 yrs old, what would be the most appropriate age to start social media training?

S for safe cyber environment. Nowadays, children start their social media adventure very early and become a great group of potential users to the big Internet players. Even though, there are more and more social networks and services dedicated especially to the youngest, it doesn’t mean, they are protected from risky situations at all. Accordingly to the statistic, almost ‘one million children were harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying on the site in the past years’. How to make then, social media environment, a safe and comfortable place for the kids? From the first years of education children should be introduced with the basic safety policies and guidelines on how to behave responsibly and what to be aware of to keep their privacy secure. Most of the kids know how to use social media, but they do not understand its power. Participating in online networks may bring a lot of advantages but can expose children to cyberbulling and online harassment at the same time.

G for good practices. To control and protect kids’ online activities, both parents and teachers, should cooperate. There are some critical points they ought to obey:

1. Educate children with social media
2. Present responsible and ethical behavior in social media – encourage kids to follow good practices
3. Warn children against using full names and other identifiable information, as well as talking to the strangers they don’t know
4. Be attentive and always find time to listen to what your kids or students want to tell you
5. Run an instant security check of you kids’ Facebook profile by using professional tools like Social Network Monitor

The answer is no. The new era in spamming and scamming is called ‘Like-Farming’, and that is exactly what most of these images and pages attempt to do. The posts and images often contain statements that you have to agree to, or that appeal to your emotional side. Because is there anyone who loves cancer, or who doesn’t want to help a disabled girl believe that she is pretty?

What actually happens to your Like

Often there are no visible effects of a Like or share of such spam, other than it appearing on your wall and in your friends news-feed. But there are invisible effects that are not as benign as you would expect. What happens is that the more Likes an image or page gets on Facebook, the more priority it is given in the newsfeed of you friends, and since everyone loves kittens (at least publicly), the amount of Likes grows. As soon as the spammers achieve a certain amount of likes, they are able to ‘harvest’ your personal information and preferences.

Why be careful what you Like

Now, we all know that personal information online not only means real money, but personal information can also be used as tools for scammers to steal your identity. And even though Like-Farming is very much against Facebook policy, the people behind it move too fast for Facebook to remove all the pages instantly: often the damage is already done.

Don’t give spammers the chance

We cannot stress enough how important it is to protect your personal information online, and thus also crucial to protect and beware of your Likes. Many Facebook users are not aware of the amount of information they are actually volunteering by clicking that one button, so become aware. And use 123people’s Social Network Monitor to help you review and rethink the pages you have Liked.

Let’s the party begin

15 or 1500? Some people say the more the better. You’d be delighted to get a huge response from people invited to a flashmob party, but if you organize a small birthday dinner just for your family and closest friends and suddenly realize that the number of guests has crossed nearly thousand…and finally even the Police responded to your invitation, you might be badly surprised. This happened to Thessa, german teenager, who has unintentionally invited over a one and a half thousand people to her party through her Facebook account. Sounds funny? Not for Thessa. This event definitely should teach her a lesson: keep your events private or choose more suitable location. Maybe football pitch?

What Facebook events tell about you?

Facebook events seem to have a lot of advantages. Simple to use, time savers and allow to reach a wide audience. Creating an event takes no more than a few seconds and keep attendees always updated about the current event status. However, joining Facebook events, may affect your privacy at some point. By accepting different kinds of invitations, you can simply demonstrate your interests, beliefs or other sensitive information you’d like to keep just for yourself or close group of people who has joined the same event. If you want to learn how to manage Facebook events, protect participants’ privacy and prevent security breaches, always keep an eye on settings:

As a host:

1. Decide about your event privacy settings.
2. Decide who can see and join your event.
3. Make it ‘public’ if anyone can feel invited.
4. Choose ‘friends of your guests’ if your friends are free to invite other people or choose ‘invite-only’ option to keep event open for those who have received invitations. Events created within the groups are always dependable on the privacy settings of the group

As an attendee:

1. Always pay attention to an event privacy settings. If you have any doubts – ask the admin to dissipate your concerns or ask to change event privacy status
2. Turn on ‘tag review’ to approve or dismiss tags that people add to your posts or event pictures
3. Avoid tagging events as your location in a post or photo if you don’t want to reveal the time you won’t be at home
4. Use Webcleaner regularly to remove unwanted web content

97% of customers use online searches to find local businesses. Whether yours is an ecommerce store or a brick-and-mortar business, the reality is that most of your customers will search for you online before doing business with you. If your online reputation isn’t up to snuff, customers will go for your competitors instead.

Image:VisionCreation

With the right strategy, you can boost your online reputation and ensure that your search results bring valuable traffic to your business.

Own Your Ranking

How do customers find your business online? They search for keywords associated with your business, and the search engine algorithm gives them the most valuable result. Learn how to optimize your website design for search engines so that customers will be presented with search engine results that positively reflect your business. If your site isn’t optimized, a search for your business could bring up that negative Yelp review from three years ago as the first result – not your website.

Make sure your website is ranking for the right keywords: your company name, your industry, your location, and your products. Drill down into your long-tail keywords to ensure accuracy. Using “body shop” as your main keyword isn’t sufficient; try going for “Joe Smith body shop restoration Lincoln Nebraska.” If web design isn’t your thing, consider hiring an SEO and online marketing consultant to help you maximize your keyword usage.

Create a company blog and fill it with interesting, engaging content that is of value to your customers. The blog will take up another line in your search engine listings. When you post frequently on topics relevant to your business, a blog can also give you a reputation for being an expert in your field.

Get Involved in Social

Having a presence on social media benefits your online reputation in several ways. When you’ve filled out and begun utilizing your social media profiles to engage with customers, your profile pages jump to the top of your search engine rankings. The volume of customers who use social media for customer service will increase by 53% in 2013. If you provide excellent service, potential new customers will see it. If your service is bad – or nonexistent – customers will know that, too.

58% of customers who tweet about a bad experience with a company will never receive a response (Bluewolf). By providing responses over social media to customer service requests, your company can generate a reputation for responsiveness and positive customer experiences. Look for plugins that enable you to address social media complaints within your call center software.

Address Feedback

On average, customers tell 24 other people about their bad experiences with a company, but only tell 15 about their good experiences (2012 Global Customer Service Barometer). These conversations are increasingly taking place over social media and the blogosphere – drastically increasing their influence over friends, followers, and other third parties. However, when such conversations take place publicly, you have the opportunity to address your negative feedback and improve your online reputation.

Set up an alert for your business name on Google and social media. If someone tweets, blogs, or posts about your business, you’ll know it – and be able to respond immediately if necessary. Reach out to them in a positive manner and attempt to make it right. They may be willing to remove the negative post or review; or, they may edit it to note that you fixed the problem for them.

The key to managing and improving your online reputation lies in control: of your web design, your search engine rankings, your social presence, and your reviews. Present yourself as an authority in the field, and make sure that potential customers find what you want them to find when searching for your business online.

Megan Webb-Morgan is an online marketing blogger for Resource Nation. Resource Nation is the premier B2B lead generation company on the web. Visit them on Facebook and Twitter!

Your valuable comments and suggestions helped a lot to improve the service and – of course – we will continue to listen to your feedback. The Social Network Monitor today turns into a premium service with two pricing plans:

• Security scan: a snapshot of your Facebook profile. You get a detailed report based on a complete scan of your profile (reputation, privacy…).
• Monthly plan: a daily scan of your Facebook profile for enhanced security. A dedicated dashboard tells you in detail about the level of protection of your Facebook profile.

The subscription plan comes with great features including unfriend email alerts, additional stats and a weekly email report for you to see activities, issues and potential threats in your profile.

50% discount for beta users and 123people members

As a special thank you, we designed an introductory offer for 123people members and users of the Social Network Monitor beta.

We offer a 50% lifetime discount for any premium subscription to the monthly plan of the Social Network Monitor made before the 31st of May 2013 . In other words, you only pay € 1.99 instead of € 3.99 monthly!

To be eligible, you must have registered at 123people before the 17th of April 2013 or having taken part in the beta of the Social Network Monitor. Simply log in to your account to check your eligibility to this offer. You can also connect with your Facebook account here.

About the Social Network Monitor

The Social Network Monitor is designed to help internet users take control over their data, protect their privacy, avoid identity theft and manage their reputation online. A few years ago, these topics seemed distant. With social networks and information sharing rising, they now are at the core of personal and professional issues.

The Social Network Monitor also addresses parents concerned by their children’s activities on Facebook allowing them to keep an eye on the use made by their children on Facebook to prevent any danger like cyberbullying and others.

Image: Some rights reserved by Richard Holt®

I almost felt like a kid that was finally allowed to open that presents my folks had been dangling in front of me for days when the great and mighty Facebook finally took me off the waiting list and gave me graph search. The first thing I did of course was seeing how many of my friends had actually liked our page. After being satisfied with our following of my friends I started playing around with random search terms, and was surprised with the random connections I discovered.

Graph Search & Privacy

Through graph search I can find general information, such as who likes what page, but more specific info on individuals is also available. Places, liked photos and other specific actions on Facebook are suddenly easily found. The rich collection of data that is available on Facebook is unlike what is collected by, for example, Google: instead of connecting tastes and surfing behaviours to your ip-adress, Facebook links information to your name. And about 13 million people on Facebook have never even bothered to alter their privacy settings.

Protect yourself on Facebook

With the great new search options that will soon be widely available on Facebook through the graph search, make sure you don’t belong to that group of 13 million who haven’t checked their privacy settings. Use 123people’s Social Network Monitor to help you adjusting what you need in order to keep you safe, such as Pages You Liked or apps you have granted permission. Or, click here for more Facebook privacy tips & tricks at TIME Magazine. And if you find content online elsewhere that you wish to be removed, be sure to check out our Webcleaner too.

Risky game – risky fun

Not only GPS or cell towers triangulation technology based devices are tracking your current location, but also geolocation services you have might use as a fun apps to play with your friends. Bringing both, useful services and risky fun, services such as Foursquare, Brightkite or Gowalla become more and more popular due to two main factors. Users’ recommendations are always well-positioned – consumers and clients are more likely to visit the same places or use the same services as others, if they say it’s worth doing it. Another reason is a human need of blowing own trumpet. People announce: I’ve been here – I made it. I scored a major. Now you can try to beat me!

Your personal spy

Most of the geolocation applications report your current location to other users or track your local area to associate and suggest you the nearest places to visit. Sometimes also, people ‘check in’ and post on their Facebook walls, asking for an advice, where should they go around the place they are currently visiting. All seems to be very handy and helpful, but within undisputed advantages and benefits, some risks come along. Facebook, if you do not control your privacy settings, allow your friends to check in on behalf of you and tag you whenever they are. Your geolocation data generated and transmitted by smart phones (or other digital devices such as tablets, cameras) are more then wanted by third-party companies for their advertising and selling purposes. And the last but not least, sharing sensitive data like your whereabouts, is the simplest invitation for burglars and stalkers.

Have fun but stay safe

Geolocation services wouldn’t work without sharing. Keeping your location hidden kills the idea of geo-sharing apps. They are useful due to large base of users who share their views, recommendations and constantly broadcast their position. Balancing between fun, benefits and security bring following tips:

1. always guard your privacy settings
2. never post about your extended absence on social networks and keep sensitive data for your closest friends only
3. you can also try 123people professional services to monitor and control your online security

Image: Flickr/some rights reserved by loop_oh

Forbes decided to look into what was deemed more important by us, and discovered that attacks on banks only account for 2% of the conversations on cyber attacks. High on the list of most-discussed-attacks are instead those on companies such as Facebook and Twitter, indicating that the general public cares more about attacks on companies that hold ‘soft’ information on us than about their credit card details.

Do we care more about Facebook?

Do we care more about Facebook than our bank accounts? A conclusive answer to this question is hard to give, but attacks on banks are to be expected since that’s where the money is. Also, banks are seen as old-fashioned institutions that are at a disadvantage in the modern online world: they protect but are one step behind. When companies that are at the forefront of the digital revolution – and that are filled with programming geniuses – get hacked, its only natural that banks will be to.

On Facebook, we share ourselves

There seems to be another aspect to it, an aspect that has to do with the nature of the information that can be procured by cyber criminals. Banking information is quite personal and private, and even though the effects of cyber crime on bank accounts can be devastating, it is just money. On social network sites like Facebook, we don’t just share random titbits of information, we share ourselves. The leaking of such information can be very personal and potentially embarrassing, and is experienced more like a personal privacy violation which accounts for the amount of attention paid to these hacks in conversation.

So protect the personal to your best abilities

Facebook issued a statement concerning the attack on the company last January. The company ensures users that no personal information was leaked and that the affected computers have been dealt with. The prevalence of Facebook in the discussion around cyber security goes to show that we really care about protecting our accounts.

So do what you can: with the help of 123people’s Social Network Monitor you can run an instant security check of your Facebook Profile for just €0.99.

OMG my parents joined Facebook!

If you thought that new technologies are far away from your parents, or at least they are computer-illiterate, you were wrong. They know already how to use an e-mail, they are pretty fast Internet surfers and they become more and more familiar with technological novelties. Finally, they‘ve reached the next level of Internet magic circle – social networks. It could escape your notice, but this is happening. Your parents joined Facebook. Should you friend them? Ask yourself a few basic questions: Do you like your parents? Do you care if they like everything you do? Do any of your pictures feature you drunk? If you need help with your decision making process, have a look at this chart.

Parents’ deadly sins

So it happened. Your parents signed up on Facebook and here comes two things that terrify you the most. First – your privacy – you think they’re going to see all your drunken pictures, all facetious comments you made, discover where exactly you are and what you’re doing, and know all the things you want to keep for yourself only and five hundred other friends of yours, but not your parents! Second – your parents’ online activities that could change your social life forever…your mom’s piece of advice on your new relationship status, your dad tagging you on the most embarrassing pictures from your childhood, or your parents’ spontaneous comments on yours and your friends’ facebook walls.

Before you proceed

Adding a new person to your social network takes a second. But within this second, your new-accepted friend gains an access to your photo galleries, your wall, statuses and more. Before you become a facebook friend to your parents, sort out and organize your content and revise privacy settings:

1. Take control on your wall and posts you add – adjust your account settings and indicate who can see it
2. Create a list dedicated to a particular group of people – your family. This allows you to control your profile visibility even better
3. Turn Social Network Monitor on – to secure your online reputation and protect your content before anyone can see it

Is Facebook becoming our new ID?

Every newborn receives his own personal identity number that makes him unique and uncopiable. It’s a proof of our personal identification: who we are, where we were born or our age. It may be used to verify various aspects of a person’s identity and apart from in certain circumstances, no one can change it. But when it comes to virtual reality, do you know how people usually check someone’s identity? It becomes more and more common to check and verify other peoples’ identity by tracking their online activity or Facebook’s profiles. Type someone’s name on an Internet browser, and check the results. Within the first browsing results, this name will appear as a Facebook account.

Pay attention or pay the price

5 new Facebook profiles are created every second and every 60 seconds nearly 510´000 comments are posted and 293 000 statuses are updated. Every day, around 300 million pictures are uploaded and almost 2,7 billion “Likes” are given. Creating online profiles in social media has become a natural part of our private and professional lives. But equally to the advantages offered by social media, a number of threats and traps are waiting for you. Building your personal brand and managing your reputation may cost you efforts and time, but your good reputation can be ruined in a minute. Do you know what you should pay attention to, in order to stay safe and protected in times of social networks invasions?

Be one step ahead

It is easy to create a social network account, but to keep it private and safe is trickier. People who spread and share a lot of information online, risk their reputation and privacy. It seems to be a dilemma: How to have fun on social networks, but at the same time avoid troubles instead of causing them? Protecting identity, data and content may seem complicated to you, but using professional tools may help you a lot:

• Be the first to react to risky content that may put your reputation on danger. Social Network Monitor will notify and alert you whenever dodgy content appears to harm your reputation.
• Take control of your privacy settings – share the right information with the right people – Social Network Monitor will help you to configure your account appropriately.
• Children and teenagers are the most exposed group of Internet users. They usually do not realize the dangers and risks of inappropriate online behaviour. Keep an eye on their online activities, but do not cross their private area – Social Network Monitor will support you by analysing content shared between your children and their friends.