Let us face it – social networking is pretty much ubiquitous these days. Everyone has an online profile on some social networking site or the other – whether it is Orkut or Facebook or Bebo or Myspace. Is it any surprise that this penchant for relationships has carried over to the search for a spouse as well? There are innumerable websites that help you to find the partner of your dreams – bharatmatrimony.com & shaadi.com are probably the largest amongst such online matrimonial portals, with tens of thousands of matches from every community.
Since pretty much everything is done online these days, you want to make sure that your online personas don’t have a negative impact on your real life. Imagine, for a moment, that you have a profile on LinkedIn, a professional social networking site. You wouldn’t post any beach photograph of yours here, would you? Those types of things are better suited for Facebook, generally speaking.
Therefore, while searching for a life partner, here are some simple rules to follow in order to ensure your online privacy remains undisturbed.
Do not reveal your real name
Most social networking sites, like Facebook, Google + or LinkedIn, mandatorily require your real name for any account, as part of their terms of service. So if you make your matrimonial profile in your real name as well, then there is a pretty good chance that someone Googling you will stumble upon your matrimonial profile. There is nothing wrong with having a profile on shaadi.com, but do you really want your Facebook buddies or potential employers to know about it?
Update your Facebook privacy settings
According to the default privacy settings at Facebook, other people have full access to everything – your profile details, photos, wall, etc. The only thing that they can’t do is writing on your wall. So if someone views your profile on a matrimonial website, then finding you on Facebook is not at all difficult to do. Do you really want random strangers going through your private photos and wall posts? You need to update your privacy settings in order to prevent this. Facebook classifies people into 3 buckets – friends, friends of friends and everyone. Log on to your Facebook account, go to my account and select “friends” for every option in the privacy section. That way, only friends will be able to access your profile.
Chat before you meet someone
On the internet, you don’t know who you are talking to. Say you stumble across your dream guy on a matrimonial site – good looking, well spoken and well settled. So you decide to travel to a new city to visit him – only to find that the picture that he posted is hopelessly outdated. He has put on 10 kgs and has a bald spot – would you still be interested in him? Probably not!
In order to avoid getting duped by someone, it is best to video chat with them frequently. Skype is free – all you need is a broadband internet connection.
Can you think of anything else that I have missed out?
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