7 things You Need to Stop Doing on Facebook

7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook

by Consumer Reports Magazine

1.  Using a Weak Password

Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters. One good technique is to insert numbers or symbols in the middle of a word, such as this variant on the word "houses": hO27usEs!

2.  Leaving Your Full Birth Date in Your Profile 

It's an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you've already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the Info tab, then on Edit Information. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.

3.  Overlooking Useful Privacy Controls

For almost everything in your Facebook profile, you can limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or yourself. Restrict access to photos, birth date, religious views, and family information, among other things. You can give only certain people or groups access to items such as photos, or block particular people from seeing them. Consider leaving out contact info, such as phone number and address, since you probably don't want anyone to have access to that information anyway.

4.  Posting Your Child's Name in a Caption

Don't use a child's name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete it by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn't on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name.

5.  Mentioning That You'll Be Away From Home

That's like putting a "no one's home" sign on your door. Wait until you get home to tell everyone how awesome your vacation was and be vague about the date of any trip.

6.  Letting Search Engines Find You

To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to the Search section of Facebook's privacy controls and select Only Friends for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn't checked.

7.  Permitting Youngsters to Use Facebook Unsupervised

Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities. "What they think is nothing can actually be pretty serious," says Charles Pavelites, a supervisory special agent at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. For example, a child who posts the comment "Mom will be home soon, I need to do the dishes" every day at the same time is revealing too much about the parents' regular comings and goings.

Fastest Job to Grow in the next decade

Fastest Growing Jobs in America

by:  John Bedecarre and Scott Olster

 

How will the job market evolve in the next decade? Fortune takes a look at some of the fastest growing professions in the U.S.

1.  Nurses

The number of registered nurses is expected to swell to 3.2 million by 2018, accounting for approximately 581,500 new jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's up from 2.6 million today, and it represents the largest overall growth projection out of all occupations in the U.S. economy, for good reason.

Americans aged 65 and older will make up 19% of the population in 2030, up from 12.4% in 2000. As the population ages and the growth of the working-age population slows down, there will be an increased demand for health care services in general, and home health care services in particular. In the past year, the home health care services industry has experienced sales growth of 11.2%, making it the fastest growing industry in the U.S., according to Sageworks, a financial analysis company.

Along with registered nurses, Sageworks projects that home care aids, physician assistants, pharmacists, and other medical professions will be in high demand for the foreseeable future.

2.  Network Systems and Data Analysts

This occupation's full title is "network systems and data communication analysts." And while it's a mouthful, it is worth remembering as it's the second-fastest growing occupation in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In simpler terms, these analysts are the folks who design and build the systems that we use to connect to the web, from work or home.

In many ways, these are the folks that make communication possible in our Internet-centric world. So perhaps it's not so surprising that they are in high demand, and will be for the foreseeable future. BLS's latest employment outlook report estimates that the profession will grow by 53.4% to almost 448,000 workers between 2008 and 2018.

3.  Software Engineers

What would all that planning and design by network and data analysts be worth without software? Not a whole lot, which explains why the BLS expects the cadre of software engineers and application developers to swell to 689,900 by 2018 (up from 514,800 in 2008). Whether they are building business software, constructing an operating system, developing games, or designing mobile apps, software engineers have a wide array of career avenues to consider.

And it surely does not hurt that the worldwide smartphone market grew by 50% between the second quarter of 2009 and 2010, according to the market research firm IDC. The impressive growth of the smart mobile industry over the past few years will only add fuel to the fire of the impressive job prospects for application developers, as smartphone users have come to expect increasingly advanced software applications to justify the increased expense of their phones.

4.  Biomedical Engineers

Biomedical engineering is expected to be the fastest growing occupation, with a whopping growth project of 72% between 2008 and 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's not much of a surprise, given that this field lies at the nexus of technology and health care, two ballooning industries within the U.S. economy.

The immense growth of biomedical engineering will be driven by the demand for new treatments for diseases and the increasingly higher expectations of aging patients to maintain an active lifestyle. Indeed, the pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry experienced 11.1% sales growth in the past year, according to Sageworks.

From developing artificial organs, medical devices like pace makers, or refining imaging technology that allows doctors to examine patients in more precise ways than ever before, biomedical engineers will have plenty to work on in the coming decade.

5.  Accountants and Auditors

While number crunching and bean counting has certainly not fallen out of style in recent memory, the economic fallout of the past few years has placed renewed focus on financial regulation. And with the passage of the federal financial reform bill in June, companies will need an even larger cohort of auditors and accountants to parse through new regulations to make sure they are in compliance.

The accounting profession is poised to experience 22% growth between 2008 and 2018, with an anticipated 279,400 new jobs in the field by 2018, according to the BLS.

6.  Veterinarians

Our love for the dogs, cats, and fish in our lives truly knows no bounds. Pet care was one of the only sectors of the retail industry that grew during the recession.

According to the 2009-2010 National Pet Owners Survey, 62% of U.S. households owned at least one pet in 2008, accounting for approximately 71 million households. And the American Pet Products Association estimates that pet owners will spend almost $48 billion on their pets. Just under $24 billion of that will be spent on medicine and veterinary care, as more Americans than ever before open their wallets to spring for treatments for an ailing animal family member.

It's no surprise, then, that veterinarians are listed as one of the fastest growing professions in the U.S. -- the number of vets is expected to expand by 36% between 2008 and 2018.

6 Things You Should Never Reveal on Facebook

by Kathy Kristof

The whole social networking phenomenon has millions of Americans sharing their photos, favorite songs and details about their class reunions on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and dozens of similar sites. But there are a handful of personal details that you should never say if you don't want criminals — cyber or otherwise — to rob you blind, according to Beth Givens, executive director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

The folks at Insure.com also say that ill-advised Facebook postings increasingly can get your insurance cancelled or cause you to pay dramatically more for everything from auto to life insurance coverage. By now almost everybody knows that those drunken party photos could cost you a job, too.  You can certainly enjoy networking and sharing photos, but you should know that sharing some information puts you at risk. What should you never say on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site?

1.  Your Birth Date and Place
Sure, you can say what day you were born, but if you provide the year and where you were born too, you've just given identity thieves a key to stealing your financial life, said Givens. A study done by Carnegie Mellon showed that a date and place of birth could be used to predict most — and sometimes all — of the numbers in your Social Security number, she said.

2.  Vacation Plans
There may be a better way to say "Rob me, please" than posting something along the lines of: "Count-down to Maui! Two days and Ritz Carlton, here we come!" on Twitter. But it's hard to think of one. Post the photos on Facebook when you return, if you like. But don't invite criminals in by telling them specifically when you'll be gone.

3.  Home Address
Do I have to elaborate? A study recently released by the Ponemon Institute found that users of Social Media sites were at greater risk of physical and identity theft because of the information they were sharing. Some 40% listed their home address on the sites; 65% didn't even attempt to block out strangers with privacy settings. And 60% said they weren't confident that their "friends" were really just people they know.

4.  Confessionals
You may hate your job; lie on your taxes; or be a recreational user of illicit drugs, but this is no place to confess. Employers commonly peruse social networking sites to determine who to hire — and, sometimes, who to fire. Need proof? In just the past few weeks, an emergency dispatcher was fired in Wisconsin for revealing drug use; a waitress got canned for complaining about customers and the Pittsburgh Pirate's mascot was dumped for bashing the team on Facebook. One study done last year estimated that 8% of companies fired someone for "misuse" of social media.

5.  Password Clues
If you've got online accounts, you've probably answered a dozen different security questions, telling your bank or brokerage firm your Mom's maiden name; the church you were married in; or the name of your favorite song. Got that same stuff on the information page of your Facebook profile? You're giving crooks an easy way to guess your passwords.

6.  Risky Behaviors
You take your classic Camaro out for street racing, soar above the hills in a hang glider, or smoke like a chimney? Insurers are increasingly turning to the web to figure out whether their applicants and customers are putting their lives or property at risk, according to Insure.com. So far, there's no efficient way to collect the data, so cancellations and rate hikes are rare. But the technology is fast evolving, according to a paper written by Celent, a financial services research and consulting firm.

9/11 Attack, looking back after 9 years

Nine years after the attacks of 9/11, how safe is America?

ground zero

 

ground zero

 A new report says Al Qaeda and its allies still have the capacity to kill many Americans, and that the threat today is more complex and more diverse than at any time since the attacks of 9/11.

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A US soldier shields his eyes from dust as a Blackhawk helicopter UH-60 lands at the US base in Arghandab Valley in August. A new report says Al Qaeda and its allies have the capacity to kill many Americans in a single attack, and that the threat today is more complex than at any time since the attacks of 9/11.

In the nine years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, America has been fighting two deadly wars aimed at destroying Al Qaeda. The cost has been very high, especially for the US military personnel and their families who have endured multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Gains have been made, but it’s been a long military and political slog. Meanwhile, the US (and other countries) have experienced lower-level attacks inspired or directed by Al Qaeda, and more such attacks and plots have been disrupted.

So is the US safer as a result of these efforts? According to a sobering new report by the heads of the former 9/11 Commission and other national security experts, it’s a mixed picture.

Although it would like to do so, Al Qaeda does not have the capability of launching an attack on the scale of 9/11, when hijacked airliners flown by suicidal Islamist terrorists slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands.

But Al Qaeda still could carry out attacks against symbolic American targets such as the New York subway system or a passenger jet – two plots that were thwarted last year and could have killed hundreds of people. And, according to the report, “This level of threat is likely to persist for years to come.”

Al Qaeda and its allies also have established the beginnings of a terrorist recruitment, radicalization, and operational infrastructure in the US, according to “Assessing the Terrorist Threat” by the Bipartisan Policy Center. (The center is a nonprofit organization established in 2007 by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell – two Republicans and two Democrats.)

“Last year was a watershed in terrorist attacks and plots in the United States, with a record total of 11 jihadist attacks, jihadist-inspired plots, or efforts by Americans to travel overseas to obtain terrorist training,” the report states. “They included two actual attacks (at Fort Hood, Texas, which claimed the lives of 13 people, and the shooting of two US military recruiters in Little Rock, Arkansas), five serious but disrupted plots, and four incidents involving groups of Americans conspiring to travel abroad to receive terrorist training.”

Two things in particular are worth noting, say the report’s authors: The increasing role of US citizens in planning and attempting to carry out terrorist attacks. And the increasing diversification of US-based jihadists, who do not fit any ethnic, economic, educational, or social profile.

“We are seeing more Americans turning on their country, going abroad and making common cause with terrorist groups,” said Bruce Hoffman, one of the report’s authors. “The array of perpetrators and the nature of their plots against America are remarkable and there is no single government agency responsible for deterring radicalization and terrorist recruitment. The terrorists may have found our Achilles heel – we have no way of dealing with this growing problem.”

Given the number of incidents involving domestic perpetrators – homegrown radicals, lone wolves, or trained recruits – the report’s authors conclude that “the U.S. is arguably now little different from Europe in terms of having a domestic terrorist problem involving immigrant and indigenous Muslims as well as converts to Islam.”

In the immediate wake of 9/11, many elected officials and national security experts predicted that another such mass attack on US soil would happen very soon.

That did not happen then and is unlikely to happen now, a subject of vigorous discussion and debate among expert analysts. But the threat to US security from Al Qaeda-inspired and directed terrorism remains.

“The American people have lost their focus on the threat and while we’re not trying to make people panic, this report reminds us that we cannot be complacent,” said former congressman Lee Hamilton, who headed the 9/11 Commission along with former New Jersey governor Tom Kean.

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By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff Writer / September 11, 2010