Monday, May 23, 2005

Blog Warnings

Just a little bit of information about the blog. Any links that I post or show on my site are safe for you to click on. I promise I won't purposely send you to any site that I feel is inappropriate. However, if you choose to "browse" blogs by clicking on the "next blog" link I can't guarantee what you might get. Blogs are open and free so that anyone can post whatever pictures they want and use any type of language they want. Unfortunately many people are using the popularity of blogs to attempt to sell you things, post pornography and use obscene language. There are a lot of fun and worthwhile blogs out there, so go ahead and browse, but just be careful.
Here are some suggestions to help you stay safe while browsing blogs and on the Internet in general. All of these are free or offer free versions.
Make sure you have a pop-up blocker, if you use Firefox (Which I reccomend) it is built in, if you use IE download the Google Toolbar and install it.
At least once a week run some sort of spyware tool, such as Spybot Search and Destroy and/or Ad-Aware. Make sure you keep up to date with the latest versions as well.
If you search using Google they have a safe search option you can turn on. Go to Google and click preferences, then look for Safe Search Filtering, turn it on. Anything you search on Google will then be filtered.
For blogs, there is a couple other ways you can browse, rather than the "next blog" link.
The easiest is to use the links on trusted blogs, such as mine. I link to my friend Jeff's blog currently, as well as my own movie blog, but anyone else who starts a blog I can link to as well. I will only link to safe blogs and if you are on a safe blog, chances are their links will be ok as well.
You can also click to view a bloggers profile, within the profile it will list a persons interests and hobbies. You can actually click on each interest or hobby and it will pull up all the blogs of people who have those same interests listed on their profile. So chances are you will be guided to "safer" blogs if what you click on is safe.
So good luck and be safe, you have been warned.

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