| When you go on a business trip, you or the businesses you come into contact with might routinely take precautions to protect your identity and possessions. Hotels no longer put room numbers on room keys; when you pay at a restaurant using a credit card, you make sure to take your copy of the receipt with you; the message on your home answering machine might say you're not available, but you've learned never to announce that you're out of town for two weeks. If you use this same logic on the Internet, you can see that there are simple ways to protect your online anonymity and help keep you safer as you move around the Web. The two essential elements to protecting yourself online are to consider what you are sharing and with whom you are sharing it. To do that Make conscious choices about what information you choose to post. Make conscious choices about who you share your information with (see Figure 2-1). Don't automatically assume that people you meet online are telling you the truth about their identities or motivations. Figure 2-1. The more people you share with, the less personal information you should share. 
Think About It 61 percent of child bloggers, according to David Huffaker's 2004 Georgetown University research project, provide contact information (see Figure 2-2 on the next page).
Figure 2-2. What kids make public in blogs 
More specifically, here are some rules of thumb for managing your online anonymity and reducing the risk of becoming a victim. Think very, very carefully before providing any direct method of contact to someone you have met only online. You might want to set up a separate e-mail account if you do choose to provide contact information. (See Chapter 10, "Step 7: Understand Risks of Fraudulent Communications and Protect Yourself," for more about how to do this.) Keep in mind that if you provide access to your IM, anybody might be able to see all of your buddies as well. Limit your exposure and that of your friends to what you feel is safe. Choose nicknames, e-mail addresses, URLs, and other online identifiers that do not reveal your identity (name, gender, age, location) and are not sexually suggestive. Be careful when posting visual clues online in photos or videos. (See Chapter 4 for more about revealing visual clues.) Be aware that protections you might have put in place on your computer are not protecting you or your child when using a mobile device. If you create a profile in a social networking setting, be careful what you include in that profile and to whom you give access. If you are using a cell phone that uses location tools such as GPS (global positioning software) and services that share this information with others, be sure you think about who you allow to see this information and when they are allowed to see it. Even though being "anonymous" might feel liberating, think twice before you tell total strangers intimate, personal feelings or information that could come back to haunt you. Think About It Consider carefully who you count as a friend when providing access to information. Sexual predators are often not strangers. In fact, many of the cases where offenders lured youth online involved family members or acquaintances who used the Internet as a way to supplement their ordinary access to a child. Online they can begin grooming that person in a way that isn't visible to others offline, where the behavior could be seen and cause concern.
Be careful about providing information that could put somebody else at risk, such as your friends or family. Deliberately putting others at risk for harassment is not only wrong, it might be criminal. Services requiring users to sign in and authenticate themselves, such as a members-only Web site, might seem inconvenient, but they are a safeguard for you because they make predators more vulnerable to being identified as they begin to leave an identity trail.
Find Out More For more advice about how to keep online strangers from finding out your location, see Chapter 7, "Step 4: Don't Let Them Know Where You Live."
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