Keep Your Personal Information at a Minimum

While it is common sense not to spill your whole life story on the internet, how much you share can be a bit trickier. This is especially true if you create awebsite to share pictures of your family and keep everyone connected and updated. Predators can take the pictures of your children, where you live and where your children go to school and use it for their own benefit. This is a frightening thought for any parent. Do not use specifics when you share your story or personal information on your website. Alert your children to the dangers of sharing their personal information such as the town they live in, the street you live on and where they go to school.

When you make your own website,try to use only the first names of your family and do not list your address or phone numbers. Since you only want people who already know you or family on your website, they will know it is yours and do not need all of this information. This will protect your family when you post pictures because anyone who has nefarious intentions will not have enough information to do anything bad with them. The main key is to share as little personal information as possible. If you must use your last name, do so sparingly deep within your website. If you have a contact page only give out your email address. This keeps your physical location secure.

Keep Your Website Off of the Search Engines

One way to protect your family is to only share your website address with a select few people. Another way to protect your content is to avoid using meta tags. Using meta tags makes it easier for search engines to find your website. By not using meta tags your will not be as visible on the internet.  You can also block your free website from being read by the search engines by adding this tag on the top of each page: <META name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">. When the search engines bots or spiders find your page they will pass it over and it will not read or list it their databases. This keeps anyone from entering your name into a search engine and finding your website. You can check what is on the internet by entering your name into a Google search. This will list any websites that contain information about you and help you to be aware what personal information about you and your family is out there for the entire world to see.

*** Tip!  You can prevent your site from being indexed by search engines easily when using Wix' free website builder. Go into your site Settings, and under Site Optimization you can uncheck a box that determines if your site is searchable or not!

Remember Social Sites

Social websites like Facebook and MySpace encourage people to share personal information with your friends. When you sign up to play a game or use an application you must give permission for Facebook and MySpace to share your information with these games and applications. You can limit your exposure on these sites by adjusting your privacy settings. On Facebook go to your homepage and under the Account tab is Privacy Settings. From there you can set who can see what. For example you can select for only your friends to see any information about you when they find you or you can be wide open and let everyone see everything. You can also customize who sees what through Facebook's privacy settings. If you want to keep your free flash website private do not share the link or any postings on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or any of the bookmarking sites such as Reddit, Digg or Diggio.

Have Fun and Be Safe

Making your own Flash website is fun and sharing pictures and stories with your family and friends is also fun. You can do this and still protect your family's information with a few tips and common sense. When you make your own website keep your personal information to a minimum, add the meta tag to block spiders and bots from reading and listing your site and set your privacy settings on social networks and you can have fun on the internet and still keep your family safe.