How much information are you willing to lay on the table?
Posted on 15. Aug, 2007 by dimaks in Life, Technology
Sophos, as one of the world leaders in IT security and control solutions purposely built for business, education, government organizations and service providers, conducted a research on social networking sites about the dangers of revealing too much information over the internet. As a test bed, they used Facebook for the experiment.
Facebook is an internet phenomenon, with a reported 100,000 new people joining the social networking website every day. But do you think carefully about your privacy settings, or do you reveal too much information about yourself to potential identity thieves? ID fraudsters can use confidential information to commit crimes against individuals and their companies. (Source)
Sophos made a profile page for “Freddi Staur” (an anagram of “ID Fraudster”), a small green plastic frog who divulged minimal personal information about himself and used to send out 200 friend requests to get an idea on how many people would respond, and to what extent one is willing to divulge further personal information.
Sophos research showed that 41% of Facebook users will divulge personal information ranging from email address, date of birth and phone number to a complete stranger, putting them to a greater susceptibility to identity theft. Sophos stressed that in most cases, it was possible to gain access to users’ family photos, information about likes/dislikes, hobbies, employer details and other personal facts that may help a criminal in guessing someone’s password or worst, impersonate them in a lot more personal and business related transactions.
Here are more interesting details gathered from the experiment:
- 87 of the 200 Facebook users contacted responded to Freddi, with 82 leaking personal information (41 percent of those approached)
- 72 percent of respondents divulged one or more email address
- 84 percent of respondents listed their full date of birth
- 87 percent of respondents provided details about their education or workplace
- 78 percent of respondents listed their current address or location
- 23 percent of respondents listed their current phone number
- 26 percent of respondents provided their instant messaging screen name
Pretty fair a pool of information that can be used for some malicious activities huh?
On the other hand, Sophos noted that Facebook’s privacy features actually is far beyond stronger than those of many competing social networking sites, but users are sometimes simply unaware (or relaxed?) on their privacy options in order to stay and behave safe online.
My take? We are in the information age and those who has the data holds the power. So be mindful of what you lay down on the floating table of the precious internet. You do not want to announce to the whole world that you will be on vacation for a week to a far and distant place so that somebody can just sneak into your house and ransack everything.
Related article here or better yet, listen to a podcast from Sophos here.
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While writing: John Mayer – Clarity
via FoxyTunes
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Part-time blogger dimaks is involved in transport planning and research and is into Internet technology, PC games, digital photography, motorcycling and martial arts.. 
Gypsy
Aug 15th, 2007
I am amazed that at this day and age when so many people get conned and manipulated for their money, people can still be so trusting?? So movies like “The Net” or “Firewall” has no effect on people, I guess. As for me…I am getting paranoid…
angel
Aug 16th, 2007
I had a friend who was able to access all the personal emails and online accounts of a certain person. He based it on the person’s friendster account (which can be viewed by everyone). So, I guess, the key to really be safe online, is to make your profile private, accessible only to your contacts. if not, prepare yourself to be cloned.
Wil
Aug 16th, 2007
I’m also surprised how some people willingly broadcast where they work, where they’re going to be on this or that date, etc. As for me, I don’t divulge where I work, what city I live in, my date of birth, etc. I try to keep personal info about myself as little as possible. Divulging email addresses isn’t a big deal. I mean, after all, how are you going to contact people without an email address. Even the white house or gov’t officials have email addresses.
tina
Aug 17th, 2007
extra cautious lang talaga ngayon. di pwede ung basta basta na lang lagay ng information and everything. thanks for the reminder..
dimaks
Aug 17th, 2007
Gypsy,
i believe as long as there are willing (sometimes, unwilling too) preys, there will be predators around.
angel,
even if you make things exclusive to your contacts, there will always be the possibility of having bad tomatoes in the basket. but at least you “know” who they are, though, you don’t control how the information will flow out from their information box.
Wil,
in the place where i am right now, email address plays a vital role in most of your crucial transactions. it is one of the things being used in retrieving other related info.
tina,
right. and don’t supply very easy to guess passwords.
aCey
Aug 17th, 2007
spooky information! i’m probably one of the people who need to clean up the stuff i share on the internet.
btw, i tagged you. hope you’ll answer, man!
dimaks
Aug 18th, 2007
aCey san,
hope it’s not like the nokia batteries ought to be recalled by its manufacturer. i’ll get to the tag, in time