Students use Internet blogs and social networking sites to express their views publicly but there are dangers about the amount of personal information they give out. Write an essay with a title for your school website. State one personal experience of thi

my inbox. Imagine my surprise – 123 messages from unfamiliar logins: “Loud Mouth, Shut Up!” “Gossip monger!” “You betray us!” “Do you want to join the 'bat gwa club'?” I racked my brains trying to figure out why I got these comments, I visited my Yahoo blog, my Facebook, and Myspace and reread every entry. Finally, I found the “offending” remark: A week ago, I mentioned a fight among F.2 students in school – along with a few clues about the parties involved. A lower former must have read it and spread the word. Clue to my identity: my name as my login name on all these sites. You may not believe this, but many students told me they have had similar experiences. Think for a moment and this should not be surprising: On the internet, spamsters send you nonsense; vendors track your purchases; and strangers spread gossip. People can put clues about us together like a jigsaw puzzle. And in this day and age, news about you cyberspace gossip travelled at a minimum rate of 56,000 bits per second. With one single click you could be exposed and ridiculed . No one can deny the wonders of social networking sites. We can share photos, find long lost friends, and form new acquaintances. But we have to say a lot about ourselves to enjoy the sites' features. In Facebook, for instance, we do have to show our face – first, a photo, then a full-blown “biography” in the profile. Perhaps this is not unlike making friends in real life -- you have to open yourself up to know others. So how much should we open up to a world of virtual strangers? Just enough, but not too much. In other words, we should exercise the same caution online as we do in life. If you don’t trust real strangers with your personal information, why should you do so with login names you don't recognize? It does not hurt to keep your bio generic either. If your profile looks just like Chris Wong's, Mary Chan's, or Peter Lee's, then you are probably safe. Of course, some of us are more outgoing than others, and they love to find friends among strangers. That said, a few rules of thumb will keep your personal info “pry-proof”. First, never register with your name, or at least not a full name. Second: Leave out real names and places where possible. And finally, we should not say anything we may regret. Sure, we can hit the delete button after we have posted a comment, but the words will remain in our minds, and perhaps in someone's inbox as a saved or forwarded message. It’s hard to take back what you have said after it has been heard. Remember: Your Facebook is like your flat. Visitors should knock before they enter, and only you decide whether they can come in!