Cyberwellness Tips

• Restrict access to your profile.  Do not allow strangers to learn everything they can about you.
• Keep your private information private.  Never post your full name, address, phone number, age, financial information or gender.
• Choose a name that is different from your real name.  Avoid using any personal information that would help someone identify or locate you.
• Revealing where you plan to meet your friends, your class schedule, or your street address makes it very easy for someone to find you.  A photograph can help strangers find out your age and can be used to identify you.
• If you are contacted by a stranger online, find out about that person.  If you agree to meet him, make it a public place and ask others to join you.
• If you feel threatened or uncomfortable during an online interaction, do not continue.  Report the matter to an adult whom you trust.
• Do not take any information from a new online contact at face value.   The internet makes it easy for people to say or do things they would never say or do in public or in face-to-face interactions.

Inspirational use of facebook

Facebook is a very good way of communication.  We can use facebook in a smart and useful way.  We can post inspiring quotes to cheer others on.  If someone is not very good in their studies, we can post our responses on Facebook to encourage him or her to do better and not to give up. When our friends are feeling upset, we can comfort them and cheer them up.  We also can congratulate and praise them if they have done well. We can help our friends in their studies if they need help with any homework.  Poems are a nice way to reinforce friendships.  Start using face book to inspire others!

Case study
 
At the beginning of the year, Tera moved into a new school.  At first, things were great and she was very popular.  She made many new friends. 
 
One day, as Tera arrived at school, other students began to laugh at her as she walked to class.  Some even made remarks about her eating lunch.  Tera was embarrassed and confused so she hurried on to her class. She did not mention this to anyone and thought that it would just go away.    

When Tera arrived at her house, She decided to log on to her facebook account.  She saw one post from a person who she did not know.  There was an embarrassing picture of Tera in the lunchroom eating. Tera realized that this picture was the reason that all the students had been laughing at her when she arrived at school that day.She was so sad and began to cry. She was too shy and embarrassed to tell anyone about the posted photograph.

As the weeks passed, the incidents worsened.  Tera saw more embarrassing and sacarstic posts about her posted by the person.  As she did the first time, she kept it all to herself but lived in fear of being laughed at in school.  One day Tera even received a post with a link to a website.  To her horror, the website was about her and contained many upsetting pictures of her as well as threats and comments aimed at her.  Tera was too humiliated to tell her parents even though her parents encouraged her to talk about her problems.  Her teachers even noticed that she had begun to make excuses to keep away from school.  She had also fallen behind in school and seemed to be very depressed.  Like her parents, Tera’s teachers did not have a clue to what was going on. 

Dangers of facebook

Facebook announced that profiles will become searchable through its new Public Search Listings.  Although you can meet new friends online, you may also come into contact with malicious people misrepresenting themselves.

Your personal information, including your snaps and posts, may be viewed by anyone. This may happen if you have set the privacy setting for your wall and photos to be viewable by 'Everyone'. This exposure can be dangerous as your photos and personal information may be used by others for other purposes.

There have been cases of identity theft and creation of fake profiles by stealing the personal information of people. If any of your friend's accounts are hacked, your personal information will be exposed to anyone.

Internet thieves and sexual predators are only too eager to exploit personal information found on social networking sites. They are waiting for an opportunity to hurt you unless you take precautions to protect yourself. 

Interesting facts about the Internet

http means – Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.  It is the protocol for moving files across the net; it requires two client programs, the http client and the server.

The internet is not owned or operated by any single organization.  The Internet and Transmission Control Protocols were developed in 1973 by an American computer scientist, Vinton Cerf, as part of a project sponsored by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by an  English computer scientist , Timothy Berners-Lee, for the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The Internet Protocol is the basic software used to control an internet. This protocol shows how gateway machines route information from the sending computer to the recipient computer. Another protocol, Transmission Control Protocol, checks whether the information has arrived at the destination computer.  If the information has not arrived, it causes the information to be resent.