Millions of people are reconnecting with old school friends and keeping up with current friends on various social media networks such as Facebook and MySpace. It’s a fun and easy way to upload pictures for your friends and followers to see, or send a quick update on what you’re doing right at this moment. It all seems harmless until you realize that almost 10 million Americans were victims of identity fraud in 2008, which is over a 20 percent increase since 2007. With over 250 million personal data records breached since 2005, millions of people have been exposed to the ill effects that being a victim of identity theft can quickly have–all because personal information got into the wrong hands.
This is the bad news.

The good news is that there are ways you can still enjoy being a social media maven AND protect your privacy to avoid becoming an identity theft victim.

The Best Ways to Secure Your Identity from Stealers

There are several privacy options available to help protect your information from getting into the wrong hands. You should always avoid sharing personal contact information. Parents always warn us, “Don’t write down what you don’t want others to read.” This includes an address, birth date, social security number, etc.

· Categorize your friends. You can create groups to categorize your friends. This allows you to share certain updates with certain groups rather than anyone and everyone that lands on your page or is one of your “friends.”

· Be unsearchable. There are privacy settings such as “Friends Only” or “Network and Friends Only” that makes it possible for only your friends to view your page.

· De-Google. Social media sites are very search engine friendly, which means your information is ranked by the search engines. Uncheck the option to be indexed by the search engines in your privacy settings as added security.

· Don’t forget your albums. Even if you set your photos to be private, your albums may still be open to the public. So, don’t forget to set the privacy option on your albums too.

· Keep relationships private. There are two options here. You can control who sees basic information such as your relationship status or remove the newsfeed on items like this to avoid it being blasted out to your friends. Some sites allow you to share who you’re in a relationship with, which can put you and your partner at an even greater risk to identity theft.

· Visit wisely. These sites have thousands of applications users can use and visit. When you use these applications, it automatically updates your status on your page. Harmless: “Tim is playing Word Challenge.” Harmful: “Tim is having sex,” which occurs when you visit a certain section of Facebook that will go unnamed here.

· Privatize contact information. Private contact information should only be visible to people you trust. Organizing your contact lists to control whom sees this information adds further protection.

· Control friends’ actions. To avoid embarrassing, defaming, or personal information from being listed on your page, visit the profile page of the site and choose who can post on your page, or avoid allowing updates to show publicly at all.

· Make friends private. Exposing your friends can expose you too. Make your friendships private to have better control over who can access your personal information, which can help to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft.

· Don’t show your age. Thieves can track you with your birth date and year of birth. Keep your date public so your friends can express their best wishes but don’t post your year of birth.

Social media is fun and exciting. It allows you to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. It can also make you vulnerable to identity thieves, which takes all of the fun and games out of your social media networking. Practice safe social media by implementing these ten tips and continue to enjoy the benefits of this online phenomenon.

About:
Identity Finder, LLC was founded in 2001 by innovative security experts. The company has quickly grown to become a leader in identity theft prevention by helping millions of consumers, small businesses, and enterprises in over fifty countries.

Identity Finder searches and secures personal information. Using the company’s proprietary AnyFind technology, Identity Finder intelligently locates social security numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, and other sensitive data inside documents, spreadsheets, e-mails, web browsers, and other system areas. Beyond identification, our technology helps securely shred or encrypt information. Install Identity Finder today to stay steps ahead of the criminals.

Fun and love is the essence of marriage. The marriage is the most important and the happiest moment in one’s life. It is the time, when a person gets to enjoy the most precious time with the family and friends. All those moments and pranks are such which cannot be rejoiced again. The games played during the marriage ceremonies are said to be a life time opportunity for the couple. Though, one can see a number of couples playing those games, but to actually practise that joy themselves is during the only time of marriage. Marriage is the time, when one goes through many changes; many ceremonies are practised, but the things, which one remembers all his life time is the games and pranks played with the relatives and the bride or the groom.

Everywhere, marriage is related to the element of seriousness and the responsibility, one gets after getting married. Marriage is always considered to be bond, which burdens the bride and groom, with a number of responsibilities and roles to play to keep the family and their life partner happy forever. A factor of contentment is something, which needs to be maintained and hence sustained in the married life of the couple, and the contribution has to be made from both the sides. Though it’s true, that the overall routine of the person changes in a great way after getting married, but the support, love, contentment and the confidence shown by the life partner are the things which are in a way are the four pillars of the married man, which helps him in leading a happy married life.

Marriage without the mixture of fun and nok-jhok, is like a flat coke, having no excitement in the drink, therefore the element of jolliness has to be in the married life. In fact, at the time of the marriage even, the bride and the groom are made to play loads of games and pranks, which makes the marriage more lively and happening. These things, helps in actually bringing the element of naughtiness and excitement in the marriage environment. The dull and the boring rituals can be made interesting and appealing with the addition of those games in the marriage.

Some of the games played after the marriage ceremony, when the bride comes to her in- laws house, with her husband are:

Find the ring:

This game is played to check, who will rule the married life among the couple, the bride or the groom. In this, they are required to take off their rings and are pour in a vessel full of milk and both the bride and the groom are asked to locate the rings in the vessel, whoever finds the ring first, is considered as the leader of the married life.

Jutta Chuppai:

Joota Chuppai is a very popular ceremony played in the Indian marriages. It is the game, in which the friends and the young children primarily the sisters of the bride, hide the footwear of the groom and in lieu of which they demand a huge amount of money as shagun. The ceremony is witnessed with a lot of tantrums and arguments, at the end of which the groom gives money to his salees.

Knotted Strings:

Sacred knots are ties in the hands of both the bride and the groom, which they have to open of each other, with the use of only one hand. The easiness, with which they open the knots, corresponds to the lifestyle and the smoothness they will have in their lives.

Thus, with the help of these entertaining rituals and ceremonies, one can make the wedding a joyous ceremony with a lot of chirpiness around.

Video games are such a major form of entertainment these days. As you likely know, children, teenagers and adults enjoy playing countless arcade-style games all the time. The wonderful thing is you can get all of these great games in your homes nowadays with ease. All you really have to do is purchase a game system like the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 or XBox 360, and plug it in to your TV. Okay, so you do have to purchase the games for these consoles separately. If you have not seen the price tags on some of these video games, you may be quite shocked when you do. On the other hand, there are fun online games for free.

Although many adults and children fail to realize it, there are plenty of fun online games for free that can be played at any time. All you need is an up-to-date PC or Mac, and online access. If you have these two things, then you could be playing online games for free right now. Now, just so you are aware, it helps if you have high-speed Internet access, which allows the games to process at the speed they are supposed to. As you probably already know, video games of all kinds do require a decent amount of bandwidth regarding the Internet. This is because they require animation and sound. Kind of like a movie.

So, what are these fun online games for free that you can enjoy whenever you choose to? Well, the first thing you need to do is check out websites that offer free video games online. These sites are games.com, addictinggames.com, and mostfungames.com. Once you check out each of these gaming websites, it is a good idea to bookmark them. This way you will not have to worry about finding them later down the road. You can simply pull them up and begin playing on a whim. Sift through each fun online games for free website, and see what each on has to offer in terms of game titles. Each site will offer different game choices.

There are a few simple reasons why you should embrace fun online games for free. First of all, this is an excellent way to save money. The cost of a game console ranges from $200 to $500. Then you have to acquire each of the video games you like. These simple discs generally cost consumers about $60 a piece, which is really ridiculous if you think about it. The game companies are making a fortune off of these. With fun online games for free, you do not have to spend a cent, but you can play all you like. Secondly, parents do not have to worry about messing with all of the newest and greatest video games on the market. You simply access the gaming websites.