First, find out what information is already on the Internet and assess the impression it leaves on people.

Follow these tips to monitor and evaluate your online reputation:

• Search your name. Begin by typing your first and last name into several popular search engines to see where you are mentioned and in what context.
• Focus your search. To get more precise results, put quotation marks around your name, so that the search engine reads your name as a phrase and not as two or more unrelated words that just happen to appear in the text. If you find other people who share your name, you can eliminate many false hits by using keywords. You can add keywords that apply only to you, such as your city, your employer, or a hobby.
• Search all of your names. If you have ever used a different name, if you use your middle name or initial, if you use a nickname, or if your name is frequently misspelled, search all variations to make sure you don’t miss anything important.
• Expand your search. Use similar techniques to search for your telephone numbers, home address, e-mail addresses, and personal Web site domain names. You should also search for your social security and credit card numbers to make sure they don’t appear anywhere online.
• Target specific sites. Check online phone directories, genealogy sites, alumni sites, the Web sites of organizations to which you belong or donate time or money, and other sites that compile personal, professional, or contact information about people.
• Read blogs. If any of your friends, family members, or coworkers have blogs or personal Web pages on social networking sites, check them out to see if they are writing about you or posting pictures of you.
• Sign up for alerts. Use the feature, provided by some search engines, that automatically notifies you of any new mention of your name or other personal information.

These tips can help you manage and protect your online reputation:

• Safeguard your personal information. A basic strategy to avoid identity theft and online fraud is to keep your personal information private when you go online. Be equally careful about sharing information offline, and be sure you know how organizations will use your information before you give it to them.
• Use privacy settings. Most social networking and photo-sharing sites allow you to determine who can access and respond to your content. If you’re using a site that doesn’t offer privacy settings, find another site.
• Don’t mix your public and private lives online. Use different e-mail addresses for different online activities to help keep your public and private lives separate.
• Choose your photos thoughtfully. Whether you’re a child or an adult, make sure potential colleges or employers can’t search the Web and find photos that make you look irresponsible.
• Watch your language and content. You should always assume that anyone can read anything you’ve written online.
• Take action. If you find information about yourself online that is unflattering, embarrassing, or untrue, contact the Web site owner or administrator and ask them to remove it. Most sites have policies to deal with such requests.

• Chat
• Play games
• Post and browse through photos and videos
• Blog.
• Post an online profile

Unfortunately, some of the information kids post on their pages can also make them vulnerable to phishing scams, cyberbullying, and Internet predators. Here are several ways you can help your kids can use social Web sites more safely.

• Communicate with your children about their experiences. Encourage your children to tell you if something they encounter on one of these sites makes them feel anxious, uncomfortable or threatened. Stay calm and remind your kids they are not in trouble for bringing something to your attention. Let them know you will work with them to help resolve the situation for a positive outcome.
• Set your own house Internet rules As soon as your children begin to use the Internet on their own, it is a good idea to come up with a list of rules for using the Internet that everyone can agree on. These rules should include whether your children can use social Web sites and how they can use them. For more information on setting rules, see Using family contracts to help protect your kids online.
• Ensure your kids follow age limits on the site. The recommended age for signing up for social Web sites is usually 13 and over. If your children are under the recommended age for these sites, do not let them use the sites. It is important to remember that you cannot rely on the services themselves to keep your underage child from signing up.
• Educate yourself about the site. Evaluate the sites that your child plans to use and make sure both you and your child understand the privacy policy and the code of conduct. Find out if the site monitors content that people post. Also, review your child’s page periodically. For more suggestions, see Tips on blogging safely for parents and kids.
• Insist that your children never meet anyone in person that they’ve communicated with online only, and encourage them to communicate only with people they’ve met in person. Kids are in real danger when they meet strangers in person whom they’ve communicated with online only. You can help protect your children by encouraging them to use these sites to communicate with their friends, but not with people they’ve never met in person.
  It might not be enough to simply tell your child not to talk to strangers, because your child might not consider someone they’ve “met” online to be a stranger. For more advice on protecting your children on the Internet, see Online predators: What you can do to minimize the risk.
• Ensure your kids don’t use full names. Have your children use only their first names or a nickname, but not a nickname that would attract inappropriate attention. Also, do not allow your children to post the full names of their friends.
• Be wary of other identifiable information in your child’s profile. Many social Web sites allow kids to join public groups that include everyone who goes to a certain school.
  Be careful when your children reveal this and other information that could be used to identify them, such as their school mascots, their workplaces,or the name of the towns they live in. Too much information can make your children vulnerable to cyberbullying, Internet predators, Internet fraud, or identity theft. For more information, see Recognize phishing scams and fake e-mails.
• Consider using a site that is not very public. Some Web sites allow you to password-protect your site or use other methods to help limit viewers to only people your child knows. With Windows Live Spaces, for example, you can set permissions for who can view your site, ranging from anyone on the Internet to only people you choose.
• Be smart about details in photographs. Explain to your children that photographs can reveal a lot of personal information. Encourage your children not to post photographs of themselves or their friends with clearly identifiable details such as street signs, license plates on their cars, or the name of their school on their sweatshirts.
• Warn your child about expressing emotions to strangers. You’ve probably already encouraged your kids not to communicate with strangers directly online. However, kids use social Web sites to write journals and poems that often express strong emotions.
  Explain to your children that many of these words can be read by anyone with access to the Internet and that predators often search out emotionally vulnerable kids. For more information, see things you can teach kids to improve their Web safety.
• Teach your children about cyberbullying. As soon as your children are old enough to use social Web sites, talk to them about cyberbullying. Tell them that if they think they’re being cyberbullied, they should share this information right away with a parent, a teacher, or another adult that they trust. It’s also important to encourage kids to communicate with other people online in the same way they would face-to-face. Ask kids to treat other people the way they would prefer to be treated.
• Removal of your child’s page. If your children refuse to abide by the rules you’ve set to help protect their safety and you’ve attempted to help them change their behavior, you can contact the social Web site your child uses and ask them to remove the page. You may also want to investigate Internet-filtering tools (such as Windows Live Family Safety) as a complement to, not a replacement for, parental supervision.

Do you want more information on helping protect your child on the Internet? See Kids and the Internet: Frequently asked questions.

1. Use caution when you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social Web site. Treat links in messages on these sites as you would links in e-mail messages. (For more information, see Approach links in e-mail with caution.)
2. Know what you’ve posted about yourself. A common way that hackers break into financial or other accounts is by clicking the “Forgot your password?” link on the account login page. To break into your account, they search for the answers to your security questions, such as your birthday, home town, high school class, father’s middle name, on your social networking site. If the site allows, make up your own password questions, and don’t draw them from material anyone could find with a quick search.
3. Don’t trust that a message is really from who it says it’s from. Hackers can break into accounts and send messages that look like they’re from your friends, but aren’t. If you suspect that a message is fraudulent, use an alternate method to contact your friend to find out. This includes invitations to join new social networks.
4. To avoid giving away e-mail addresses of your friends, do not allow social networking services to scan your e-mail address book. When you join a new social network, you might receive an offer to enter your e-mail address and password to find out if your contacts are on the network. The site might use this information to send e-mail messages to everyone in your contact list or even everyone you’ve ever sent an e-mail message to with that e-mail address. Social networking sites should explain that they’re going to do this, but some do not.
5. Type the address of your social networking site directly into your browser or use your personal bookmarks. If you click a link to your site through e-mail or another Web site, you might be entering your account name and password into a fake site where your personal information could be stolen.
6. Be selective about who you accept as a friend on a social network. Identity thieves might create fake profiles in order to get information from you.
7. Choose your social network carefully. Evaluate the site that you plan to use and make sure you understand the privacy policy. Find out if the site monitors content that people post. You will be providing personal information to this Web site, so use the same criteria that you would to select a site where you enter your credit card.
8. Assume that everything you put on a social networking site is permanent. Even if you can delete your account, anyone on the Internet can easily print photos or text or save images and videos to a computer.
9. Be careful about installing extras on your site. Many social networking sites allow you to download third-party applications that let you do more with your personal page. Criminals sometimes use these applications to steal your personal information. To download and use third-party applications safely, take the same safety precautions that you take with any other program or file you download from the Web. For more information, see Before you download files, help protect your computer.
10. Think twice before you use social networking sites at work. For more information, see Be careful with social networking sites, especially at work.
11. Talk to your kids about social networking. If you’re a parent of children who use social networking sites, see How to help your kids use social Web sites more safely.