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Even if you'd never leave the house for any period of time without locking the doors, your use of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, has the potential to compromise your privacy and safety. Imagine being on a family vacation at Disney World and posting photos of the kids hugging Goofy. Your friends might love to see those images, but they also tell thieves that you're out of town. Consultant and speaker John Sileo, a privacy expert who runs thinklikeaspy.com, says he's seeing at least one theft a week in the news related to social media posts, and that's just from crimes that are solved. Sileo believes that users aren't aware of how much personal info they're giving up online.

"Anything they post -- a photo, a video or a blog post -- is public, it's permanent and it's exploitable. Once you put it out there, as much as you think it's private, it will probably get out," Sileo said.

Rather than give up social networking entirely, you can avoid many of the dangers by being aware of the risks and being smarter about what you post.

Basics

First take a look at what social media sites you belong to and whether it's time to cut ties with services you no longer use. If you're no longer active on MySpace, Plaxo or other sites that may have access to some of your personal information (say your email address or phone number), delete those accounts.

Next take a look at how you choose your friends on social networks. Do you only connect with close friends and family or do you also allow for friends-of-friends, business contacts and anyone you've met "in real life"? It's good to set and stick to rules for how you'll accept friend requests. You can always create secondary accounts if you don't want personal and business contacts to mix.

In posting, common sense is always your best guide. Avoid uploading photos of your brand-new home-theater setup or the new car parked in your driveway. Don't post status updates telling the world you're about to go on a long trip to Europe when nobody's house sitting and you don't have a security system installed. Try to keep from clueing everyone in to your daily work and going-out schedule.

Facebook

Managing Facebook's privacy settings can be a challenge, since they seem to change every few months. The most important thing you can do to protect yourself is to be aware of who can see your status updates and profile information. Facebook allows you to create groups of people and then determine what groups can see which posts. Learn to use these options.

Twitter

As it began to go mainstream, Twitter added a geographical feature that allows followers to see where you were when you tweeted. If you post from home, you should disable this. Even if you're not on a device with GPS, Twitter can still determine your location via your Internet connection from a home computer.

Don't tweet your home address or phone number. Unless your Twitter account is set to "Private," every tweet you post goes public and can easily be Googled.

Photos

Popular photo sharing sites, like Flickr and Google's Picasa, allow you to post "geo-tagged" photos; they include information that can easily be shown on a map. If you take a lot of photos in your house or yard, it's like handing a street guide to potential thieves. Disable geo-tagging for any photos you take at home.

Location Services

On location-based social networks, such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook's Places, you should be even more careful about adding friends. Change settings to limit what's posted publicly and never, ever create a check-in spot out of your home or anyone else's home.

Social media is a great way to make new contacts and share information with people you care about. But it only takes one unwanted "friend" with too much information to put your home in danger. Stay on the safe side and post wisely.