Top 10 Twitter Safety List

Twitter is a fun and easy way to share what's going on in your life with your friends and family. Users can easily type 140-character "Tweets" to tell their friends about the great movie they just watched, the test they just passed, or what they're eating for lunch. However, the lunch menu can easily become the exact coordinates of where a person is eating lunch and what time they arrived (all great information for a potential stalker to have). This page has a list of common Twitter Safety Tips, that can also be applied to other microblogging sites and social networks such as Facebook.

Or is a Protected Twitter Account Just a False Sense of Security?

You can choose to protect your tweets after logging into Twitter and clicking on "Settings" and checking the "Protect my Tweets" box. This makes it so that only your Twitter friends can read your posts. However, your tweets that were posted previous to checking the "Protect my Tweets" box will always be public and may still be visible in some places on Twitter (like Twitter Search).

Twitter can have safety and privacy issues for kids as well as adults. Anyone can sign up for a free account and can begin posting details about their lives that is search-able by Twitter and the major search engines. Twitter's Terms of service states that users must be at least 13 years of age to use the service. However, this does not have to be acknowledged when a user signs up, so that would be easy for a child to miss.

Twitter is much more insecure than Facebook because by default all posts are public and will be broadcast in a publicly search-able time-line by anyone with a connection to the internet.

A recent report from Morgan Stanley stated that teenagers prefer Facebook to Twitter not only because they are more able to connect with people they actually know, but also because Facebook keeps their information private and allows them to choose who they want to share with (much safer).

Teens Don't Tweet became quite a topic of conversation on Twitter after the report was released, and many teenagers started making it clear that they DO in fact Tweet.

Whether a teenager does or does not use Twitter is not nearly as important as makiong sure that teenagers know how to protect themselves on Twitter, Facebook or any other social networking platform.

Tweets can exist in one form or another for years to come.

Not only do you have to be careful not to divulge too much personal information in the public space of Twitter, but you also have to be aware of what you Tweet. Something that you Tweet may not be embarrassing now - but it could be embarrassing 5 years or 10 years down the road.

Remember, even if you delete your Twitter account that your Tweets could be archived indefinitely by services such as the The Way Back Machine. It will be interesting to see what Twitter History is available on The Way Back Machine when 2006 data is added to the service (the year Twitter was launched).