Avoid Messier Break-Ups By Locking Down Your Web Life

Seeing your just-separated ex with a new fling on Facebook? Painful. Seeing that they’ve run through your Gmail? Devastating. Ars Technica suggests a well-considered checklist of changes to make to your online accounts in the wake of a severed relationship.

Photo by pawpaw67.

Jacqui Cheng runs down and details how to change your privacy settings on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and a few other places, and dispenses with what sounds like hard-won advice on dealing with potential blow-back. Un-friend-ing, for example, isn’t the cruel, dramatic move you may think it is, Cheng writes:

Just imagine if, every time you logged into Facebook, you saw updates about how happy your ex is with his or her newfound freedom? Or if there’s someone new in the picture and you accidentally caught a glimpse of a picture they took together? The same applies in reverse: do you really want your ex to get regular updates about when you’re going out and who you’re hanging out with?

Look at it this way: mature adults understand that some online space is necessary to move on. Immature adults who get upset over this step… well, they’re the ones you want to most avoid anyway.

It’s a good read for those just getting over a relationship. If nothing else, take the advice to change all your passwords, because the person you used to know probably doesn’t have the same boundaries when it comes to your web life anymore.

How to break up in an online world-and avoid e-stalkers [Ars Technica]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


Leave a Reply