Using the Internet Safely For Seniors

That’s a lot of information to expose about someone who went to great

lengths to remain private. There are two problems here: Although

Blanche did a lot to protect her privacy, she didn’t tell her friends that

her privacy was important to her, and Blanche’s friends were disrespect-

ful by posting identifiable information about her without first learning

her privacy boundaries.

Figure 7-5

Use Discussion Boards

A discussion boardis a place where you can post written messages, pic-

tures, and videos on a topic. Others can reply to you, and you can reply

to their postings.

Discussion boards are asynchronous,which means that you post a mes-

sage (just as you might on a bulletin board at the grocery store) and

wait for a response. Somebody might read it that hour — or ten days or

several weeks after you make the posting. In other words, the response

isn’t instantaneous, and the message isn’t usually directed to a specific

individual.

You can find a discussion board about darn-near every topic under the

sun, and these are tremendously helpful when you’re looking for

149

Chapter 7: Sharing Your Information with Others