The list of people whose lives fall into ruin because of an online misstep is growing longer by the day. Some simply don’t fully understand how anything that they post online can possibly be used against them. As such, they take extreme liberties with what they share online, sometimes using Facebook as a place for them to ‘think out loud,’ post rants or tirades or upload incriminating pictures. It would be nice if all their posts were meaningful, humorous or, at the very least, harmless. However, this isn’t always the case, as evidenced by the sheer number of people who have been suspended from school or fired from their jobs because of a Facebook faux pas.

Thankfully, there’s Secure.me. Secure.me is a free service that helps users protect their privacy and monitor their reputation on Facebook. Additionally, it also helps parents monitor their children’s online activities.

Secure.me works by providing people with an overview of their online activity: comments, likes, events, check-ins, friends, etc. If the program finds any content that’s ‘questionable’, it automatically inform the user. Also, the program uses facial recognition software that allows the user to find photos of his friends that include him, even those which have not been tagged. In the same way, the facial recognition feature can also be used by parents who are monitoring their children’s online activities. They can easily find any pictures of their children which were posted by other users. The service also scans links provided by other users and automatically checks for the presence of any virus or malware.

With how quickly information is shared now that people have instant access to the Net through phones, laptops, and tablets, it’s getting increasingly harder to keep track of one’s reputation. Even if you’re careful about what you post, your friends might not be as careful. If they post something controversial about you, you still might not be able to catch it in time before it’s seen by someone else. Give it six hours on the net – or even for just a few minutes – if somebody else sees it and makes a screenshot, you’re toast.

With Secure.Me, people don’t have to be online 24/7 in order to ensure that their reputations are kept safe. It eliminates the need to sift through the mountain of content that’s being shared each day. Users can rest easy as they’ll just be notified by Secure.Me of a possible problem should it crop up.