How To Use Facebook Without Losing Your Job Over It

From InternetDuctTape:

I’ve followed my friends as they jump around from social network to social network, creating profiles on Friendster, Hi-5, Orkut, MySpace and now Facebook, even though I never use the sites.

Facebook is great networking tool that lets you keep in contact with former friends from high school, university and various jobs. It easily connects people together with tools like registering that you are the owner of a specific cell phone number, keeping track of every email address you’ve ever had, and logging into your email account to find out who you know.

As you can guess from my previous series on online pseudo-anonymity, something that collects as much personal information as Facebook scares the bejebus out of me. From the address book import I can clearly see that everyone I’ve ever even remotely known is already on Facebook, and the default settings mean they’re all sharing all kinds of personal information they may not be aware of.

The potential downside a lot of my friends and acquaintances don’t realize is that Facebook is more like LinkedIn than MySpace and it is “on the radar” of your employers. People have already lost their jobs because of their Facebook activity. Most people don’t think about online privacy concerns like these unless they’ve had a bad experience because of being too free with information.

But Facebook can be used safely and with little impact on the rest of your life by following these tips.

Read the rest here.