part of your IM profile, anyone who can see your pro-
file can view it. This is useful information for friends
and criminals, so it’s important to consider whether
you want your number exposed — especially if you
have many people on your contact list who you don’t
personally know.3.Click a contact to initiate your conversation. (You can
import contacts from your e-mail contacts when you sign
up, or you can add them yourself.)
4.Click the phone button or icon to initiate a phone call.
IM programs let your contacts see when you’re
online, unless you change your settings to hide this
information — something that’s good to know when
you’re busy and don’t have time to chat. You can
choose availability settings such as Online, Busy, Be
Right Back, Out to Lunch, or even display your status
as Offline, even when you aren’t. In the Windows Live
Messenger IM program shown in Figure 7-10, click the
arrow next to your name to access such a list.IM is one place where people use shortcut text. Some
of this will be familiar to you, such as FYI (for your
information) and ASAP (as soon as possible). Other
short text may be less familiar, such as LOL (laughing
out loud). Visit http://look-both-ways.com/
stayingsafe/IM.htm#having_troublefor
a table of common shortcut text terms. Knowing
these will make communicating with younger folks
more fun.157Chapter 7: Sharing Your Information with Others