Brian Hyder, the LAN support specialist at Booth Library, told audience members that social networking sites are some of the most insecure places on the Internet during an Internet safety presentation.

With the social networking fad at an all-time high, millions of people have put their personal information on the web for everyone to see.

Thousands of hackers are constantly bypassing security and accessing people’s “secure” information, Hyder said.

Although billions of people from across the world use social networking sites, it may not be the best idea, Hyder added.

“Facebook’s goal is to have everything open,” Hyder said.”Their privacy settings are always changing so it’s very hard to keep your Facebook profile secure.”

With Facebook constantly changing its privacy settings and cooperating with Google to archive every profile, it has become very difficult to completely monitor who can and who cannot see a person’s profile.

“This can become a problem with stalkers and hackers as they are able to access your information,” Hyder said.

Internet Explorer, which had been the web browser of choice in previous years, is now seen as one of the most corrupted browsers on the web.Hyder said using Internet Explorer puts a computer at high risk of being infected by a virus.

Hyder recommends the browser Mozilla Firefox. To enhance the security of Internet Explorer, one should always use the built-in Firewall, he added.

“Firewalls can be hacked, but something is better than nothing,” Hyder said.”Not having any form of security for your computer is just asking for trouble.”

Google has also raised speculation with its capability of knowing just about everything about its Internet users.

Google archives almost everything on the Internet, and is constantly gathering information on people all across the world.

Google is capable of knowing when you are sick, where you plan to go, if your spouse is cheating and where you are at by going through peoples’ search history, Hyder said.

“If you have something you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” Hyder said, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, has said. “It’s important that all the information be made available to the authorities.”

Jordan Pottorff can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].