Photos


 * How to safely use photos online**

**The bottom line:** It's hard to control how your photos are used once they are posted online, but these steps can reduce your chances of becoming a victim of identify thieves or other types of criminals. //This article was reported by Kimberly Palmer for U.S. News & World Report.//
 * 1) **Check your privacy settings .** Facebook and many other social networking sites give users options when it comes to who can view their photos and personal information. On Facebook, users can specify that they want only their "friends" to view their photos, or friends of friends, or everyone. (To check your settings, log in to your account and go to "privacy settings.")
 * 2) **Make sure you know who your friends are.** If you have hundreds of friends on Facebook, chances are you don't know all of them well. Take a moment to review your friends list to make sure everyone still sounds familiar. Perhaps you accepted a friend request from an old high school classmate, but he or she appears to have grown up into an odd person. You might want to consider unfriending him or her.
 * 3) **Disable the GPS technology before taking photos with a smartphone if you plan to post the photos online.** Even regular cameras are starting to get this technology, so check what information is included on your photos before posting them online. You should be able to turn off the high-tech feature before snapping, and you might want to consider doing so when you are in your home or places you frequent often. Look in "settings"
 * 4) **Watch out for lower-tech ways of sharing personal information, too.** A photo taken in front of your home could reveal your address, or a T-shirt could contain a school logo. If you're posting photos on a blog or other publicly accessible site, you probably want to keep your personal details under cover.
 * 5) **Don't post photos that could embarrass you or your friends, even in 10 or 20 years.** Facial recognition technology on the rise, it's possible that photos posted now will still be searchable online by the time you look for your first job. You don't want to leave a trail of photographs that could hurt your reputation later.
 * 6) **Stand up for yourself (and your friends).** If a friend or relative posts photos of you on Facebook and you don't want the images online, ask the poster to take them down. After all, you don't know how carefully others monitor their friends lists, so it's impossible to know who is viewing the photos. The same goes for YouTube, Picasa and other media-sharing sites.
 * 7) **Use a watermark.** Bloggers are increasingly turning to watermarks, which imprint their photos with their name or blog title, making it harder for someone to misappropriate the image. Add it in a spot where it cannot be easily cropped out. Doing so is sort of like locking your door or having a security system: It makes it more likely that a scam artist will leave your photo alone and move on to the next, more vulnerable victim.