How could Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites affect your credit when they have nothing to do with how you pay your bills? We spend a lot of time educating the public about what banks look at when approving a credit application. 

You may have heard in recent news that employers will Google the name of an applicant to see what information they can find online about the applicant. The information found online can substantiate the applicants' character, credibility and even validate if information provided in the application was true. 

The financial community has caught on and also has realized what a valuable tool Google and social networking can be when determining whether or not to approve someone for credit.

What you post to your social networking profiles does not report to your credit report. 

With that said, through Google searches, banks have been able to find out information about their applicants to far greater depth than that which would be contained within a credit report. Some examples include applicants who are experiencing marital problems, substance abuse issues, or other personal or financial issues that may indicate that they are on the road to financial trouble. 

So how do you ensure that your dirty laundry is not being aired all over the internet? The first thing you can do is privatize your social networking profile settings. Also pay attention to what you post online and remember that publicly posting your personal information online is the equivalent of standing on a street corner, shouting it out to anyone that can hear you. 

On Facebook, if you select the settings button, you can privatize the section of your profile that you don't want to have appear publicly. It is important to remember with Facebook, you cannot privatize your entire profile at the touch of one button. You must go in and one by one, privatize each part of your profile. Often people think they have privatized their profile on Facebook but have failed to privatize all of their tabs, one of the most dangerous being the photos tab. Pay attention. 

Sites like Twitter, Blogger or and WordPress will all automatically assign you a vanity URL, which is usually your name. This is why when your name is searched on Google your social networking profiles may come up. One way to stop this from happening is to manually change your vanity URL from your actual name to a nick name. Like with Facebook you can also visit your settings page and privatize your profile so that it does not appear in public search results. 

For more information about building a strong financial profile and establishing good credit please visit www.trueassess.com