ormation, such as if you are buying or selling things. Use the guidelines in tip #3 to only give your personal information to websites that can be trusted to keep it secure.
Things get a little bit murkier when it comes to social networks and websites. You want to express yourself and let other people get to know you, but putting information onto a place like Facebook or Twitter makes it easy to find and/or spread. Fortunately, many of these websites have privacy features that you can use to limit who can see information that you post. However, before you share information in the first place, it's a good idea to ask yourself if you'd be willing to let a total stranger — or at least a friend of a friend — see it and share it.
5. Only make payments on trusted websites.
Following tips #3 and #4, if you're going to use trusted e-commerce websites to buy goods and services, make sure to pay for your stuff through the specific website that you're using at the time, if you can. This ensures that a trusted website has a record of your transaction, and can help you out if something goes wrong.
Some third-party sellers attempt to have customers make payments for items outside of the websites that they sell them on. Not only do many e-commerce websites disallow this (because it cheats them out of commission fees), but even if a site does allow it, you probably shouldn't go for it. It's a very easy way to get scammed, since nobody with the proper authority will have a paper trail to help you track down and punish the scammer.
6. Log out of websites and other Internet-based programs when you're done using them.
This is a really important precaution if you use public computers, but it's not a bad idea in general. If you're using a website where you have to log into a user account, be sure to log out of your account once you're finished using the website. Also, disable any features of that website that allow you to stay logged in if you close your web browser or don't do anything while logged in for a little while. Forgetting that you're logged into a website or Internet-based program could mean that a stranger could sit down at the computer you were using, and find that they're able to access your account without even cracking your user name or password. That's a very easy way to have your confidential information stolen.
Again, we'll be going over many of these precautions in greater depth in our upcoming tutorials and courses. In fact, our next set of tutorials in this course deal with our very first precaution: antivirus software!