The Internet seems to have taken over our social lives instead of helping us stay connected with friends. Just like the real world, if we’re not careful who we share our lives with, they will abuse it for personal gain.

Simply telling your friends that you’re at an awesome club or out of town having a good time will have that jealous ex refreshing your profile page or a robber looking through local newsfeed clicking on your name.

The pictures you post can be dangerous, too. Details like your license plate, address or demeaning pictures should be cropped out or stay between friends, away from people who can use that information against you.

The same goes for speaking your mind. When you’re out with your friends, it’s natural to secretly whisper how you feel about others. But in social media, we feel protected behind a computer screen to say whatever we please. Posting anything passive-aggressive or too intense could be seen by that one person you don’t want to see, or even a future employer.

These situations are worst-case scenarios, but why be ingenuous with your personal life online when you’re much more careful in the real world?

Simply changing your attitude toward your favorite websites means being safer and making sure what you say only gets to the people you want to hear you.

On Facebook, it’s easy to change your privacy settings. On top of any page to the right is a privacy menu, which is opened by clicking on the lock icon. From there you can change basic options like “who can see my stuff” and “who can contact me.”

It’s best to go into these settings and change most options to “friends only,” leaving only your profile picture and your name to “friends of friends” or “public” so people you are not friends with can find you. The same should be applied to other sites.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have fun chatting and sharing with your friends, but would you really share drunk escapades with anyone who walked by, or tell a stranger that you’re going to a show tonight? The Internet shouldn’t be any different.

All social media sites now carry the same notion of everything being about you. It’s changing what’s appropriate. The same effect is what makes people use these sites inappropriately. So it’s up to you to keep weirdos from watching your house from a bush.