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Security and social networking

by Rainer Schmid

2007/10/01

There’s a lot of talk going on at the moment surrounding the topic of social networks and how safe your personal information really is. A recent publication by emedia's RapidResearch service highlighted this for me.

The “RapidResearch Social Networking Sites Survey” focused on online users’ views of social networking sites and over 100 individuals, exclusively from the UK, took part in the research study.

The central research findings were as follows, "nearly two thirds (62%) of UK’s social-networking site users say they are worried about the safety of their personal data" and then "nearly one-third (31%) of users say they have entered false information about themselves to protect their identity".
Interesting, yes?
It seems that people are weary about posting their personal information on social networking sites, rather preferring to create an alias for themselves or just leaving out some important information. People are learning… I just hope they don’t have to learn the hard way.

Some of the other findings from the report that I found rather interesting are:

81% of those surveyed use networking sites.
The most popular sites among users are: Friends Reunited (47%), YouTube (42%), MySpace (39%), Facebook (26%) and LinkedIn (19%).
Respondents keep in touch with various types of contacts: friends (46%), colleagues (24%) and clients or potential clients (8%).
Those surveyed visit social networking sites for personal and professional reasons.
87% of respondents think social networking sites can be used for business purposes, including networking (65%), exchanging ideas (58%), getting advice (44%), recruitment (43%), research (35%) and selling (31%).
When asked what the main purpose for using social networking sites was, 11% responded "business purposes".

Some interesting stats, especially since it seems that more and more people are using social networking sites for business purposes.

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Well, as far as I'm concerned, if you don't want it public don't join a SOCIAL NETWORKING site.

The whole point is that you are supplying info so that you can network, share make friends and be merry. Ja, I understand if you're a celeb, then maybe an alias is alright.

But what is the worst that can happen, it's not like you're supplying ID numbers, bank details and pictures of you and your secretary?

k' bye

Posted by Marc on 2007/10/01

You only need a little information to get more. 1.3 million job seeker records were stolen from Monster by a new Trojan horse called Infostealer.Monstres. The information included candidates names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Symantec reported that the (probably stolen) login credentials of legitimate recruiters were used to access resumes on Monster, the data was then uploaded to a remote server and targeted phishing email was sent to those candidates, along with a Trojan horse which looks for bank and credit card account information. Scary stuff.

Posted by Chewbacca on 2007/10/01

Perhaps, but Monster isn't really a social networking site. Most people have their email addresses available anyway (blogs, company websites, comments like this etc). It does have a very similar wireframe layout to LinkedIn though ;)

A trojan is dangerous on any site with a login feature, and is particularly scary with regards to banking etc, agreed, but i have very little spam and phishing emails coming to my inbox. My little firewall and Junk filter sorts that out for me.

Online rule for me? dont sign-up on anything where there isnt a physical adress or a telephone number on the site as well, or is at least a little credible.

Posted by Marc on 2007/10/02

I think 1 of the reasons people don't give all their details or give false info is because they fear identity theft and don’t understand the details about what is actually needed to steal an identity.

Another thing that I can think of is that people fear paedophiles, psychos and other abusers getting hold of their, or their children, so will limit the details that they post or allow their children to post up on these social networking sites.

Sure there are also many other reasons but these 2 are just off the top of my head.

Posted by Rainer on 2007/10/02

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