Web page guidelines: Privacy Protection

• "Nice" people will find you

  While creating your personal or professional web page keep in mind that, once published, it will be available for the whole world to see. This can be very beneficial and exciting. Long lost relatives and old friends will be able to find you. You may attract prospective employers and new friends with similar interests and hobbies. But there can also be a negative aspect to publishing information about yourself on the World Wide Web.
  
  

• "Bad" people will find you

  Advertisers who create electronic mailing lists will easily find you and you may wind up getting lots of unsolicited "junk" mail. Con artists, stalkers, and other troublemakers exist on the Internet just as they do in the real world. Protect your privacy by taking reasonable precautions. Don't publish personal information that others could use to harm you. If you care a great deal about privacy, then perhaps you should not create a web page about yourself.
  
  

• Others will link your page

  Just as you link other people's pages, others will link to your web page. While this can be flattering, it can also be unpleasant. If you publish a picture of yourself in a swimsuit, you might find that adult X-rated sites link to your picture as part of their pornographic collection. Some may link your page as an example of great web design, but others might link it as an example of a really worthless page. These are only a few of the risks you take when publishing personal information on the web.
  
  

• Restricting access to your page

  It is possible to restrict access to your web page. Some service providers can offer the ability to restrict access via passwords - this prevents unauthorized individuals from seeing your page. Some service providers can allow you to restrict access by IP address - this prevents unauthorized sites from seeing your page. Check with your service provider to see which options are available for your web page. Restricting access won't necessarily guarantee your privacy. Someone who can access your page might copy it and share it with others.

  Often, others will find your page by searching the web using keywords. There are "robots" that visit web pages to build indexes that are searched when someone types in a keyword. You can try to prevent robots from visiting your page, but some will still ignore the request. Check with your service provider to find out how to do this.