FB "Out of Town" Status

I guess people really aren't that sick of political corruption yet. The Blagojevich jurors wussed out and found him guilty of one out of twenty-four counts. Yeesh.

So, there is continuous discussion at my house about the safety of posting on Facebook that one is not at home. More specifically, Jeff telling me that. (Does he know me? I am the queen of internet paranoia privacy!)

Some easy ways I address this issue:

1) Most of the time, I do not specify in my status that I am with anyone in my family. I simply say that I am somewhere. I don't imply that the whole fam is there, so no one knows if the house is empty or not.

2) I have a friends list that I call "Vacation." It is limited to close friends. If we leave town, before I make any sort of posts that I am leaving for the airport or packing or something, I change the privacy setting of my statuses to be visible to only that group. I post whatever I want to during my trip. Then when I return, I switch my privacy back to the normal setting. You could also use a group like this for an individual status where you are saying you are not home.

3) I don't friend people I don't know. People who use Facebook for networking might want to be vigilant about personal statuses, or use a friend list for privacy. That cute guy you FB-friended at the airport bar may be a burglar... or a stalker who shows up at your hotel during your girls' weekend in Vegas.

There's a happy medium between checking in every half hour via Foursquare and never mentioning you are out of the house. It's social media. We share what we're doing. There is a way to do it pretty safely.