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I went on vacation and all I got was my house broken into and my stuff stolen!

Posted on February 23, 2010

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I love you Facebook/Twitter/Google Buzz, I really do. You give me a reason to be important…well to the 10 people that added me or follow me. I mean you’re fun to post pictures and make believe that I can one day become a real farmer if I can just get enough virtual seeds but lately you have not been that awesome.

Buzz, you went and told people that I have a social page and then automatically added them!

Facebook, if you change one more layout on me and add me to Google searches ever again…POW straight to the kisser!

Oh, Twitter, I got a beef with you too! I hear there is a website that tracks if I say I am on vacation so people can break into my house! Seriously!?

As always in my dad voice “You control what you want out there on the interwebz, so make sure it’s something you want the world to see!”

So since you wanted to play dirty I had to play even dirtier.

Since Google Buzz is new I will start with it first, here is how you can change the privacy settings:

You can change your privacy settings by visiting your Google Profile and clicking “Edit Profile” in the top right-hand corner. At the top of the “About Me” tab you’ll find an option reading: “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me.” Un-check the box next to it in order to hide those lists from public view. At the bottom of the same tab you’ll find the option to change your profile URL to (what we hope is) a random number. 

If you want to opt out of Buzz entirely, scroll down to the bottom of your Gmail page, and click on the tiny “turn off Buzz” link.

For Facebook:

The New York Times posted a great article on changing your setting on Facebook it can be found here.

For Twitter:

On Twitter it really depends if you have a feature on your phone (twitter client i.e. twitterifc, twit pro, and any other third party apps that associate with twitter). What you want to do is find the settings in those apps and cut off the geo-tagging option. The geo tagging is where someone can locate you, which is great if you are at a restaurant you want everyone to come to but bad if you are at home and send it out.

Also on all of these make sure you don’t have your address or phone numbers listed and I know you want to brag about being on vacation but you may just want to keep it a secret till you come back from the trip.

Do you have tips on how to keep your profiles safe? Let me know in the comments section.