Social Networking Self-Defense: Part I

How do you safeguard your privacy and security in the all too public social networking scene?

That social networking sites have become a raging phenomena is all too obvious. As of this writing Wikipedia has 179 entries in its “List of social networking websites“.

Seventy-nine of those claim memberships in excess of one million and thirty-nine in excess of 10 million. At the top of the heap membership numbers are astronomical — in excess of 100 million and up to 350 million.

Oh, and if you consider yourself fairly familiar with the “Internet social scene”, I think you’ll be in for quite a surprise when you check Wikipedia’s list, because I’ll bet you weren’t aware of the existence of even a fraction of them.

While we tend to think of social networking sites as a recent development, many of these entities have been around for quite a few years — much longer than the term “social networking” itself. Take a look at the top five sites listed by Wikipedia:

Those figures are for registered users only and don’t include visitors. Whichever way you slice it these sites command the attention of very significant numbers of people all over the world.

Which brings me to the point of this article…

Vermin Loves a Crowd

You see, it’s the nature of the beast that any large congregation of people is a magnet for crims and scam artists. If you accept that proposition then you might reasonably assume that a virtual congregation is no different in that regard to a physical one.

But you’d be wrong!

The virtual herd, especially those who flock to social networking sites, are comprised of very different cattle indeed. Let’s look at an example…

At a rock concert, a shopping mall, a rally, a sporting venue or a protest march, you won’t find everyone handing out flyers with their photograph, name, birth date, zip/postcode and comments about their work/social/love life. Why not? Because any fool would be aware that that sort of information can be used against you. You just don’t hand that sort of information over to strangers in public.

Yet that type of information sharing is quite common on social networking websites!

Organized Crime

Many members can’t wait to expose every detail of their lives to all and sundry. Even a fraction of that information is sufficient for a competent criminal to start building a profile on you, the ultimate detail of which would leave you dumbfounded!

And make no mistake about it, organized crime is not just making inroads onto the Internet — they are already there in full strength, with competent programmers and researchers on their payroll, and identity theft as a major money-spinner.

There is so much information available about individuals online — more often than not information that they willingly provided for all the world to see — that financial institutions are having to rethink how they will ask customers to identify themselves. The old favorites of date-of-birth and mother’s maiden name are now rarely used by security-minded enterprises, because that sort of information is frequently very easy to come by.

Online banking fraud and Internet shopping fraud are both up significantly on previous years and still rising, hence the search for more secure methods that aren’t susceptible to derivation from publicly available information. Personal pin machines are already a reality and, in the absence of something better turning up, could eventually become mandatory for all online transactions.

British banks seem to have been leaders in implementing this technology, with Barclays, NatWest and Nationwide sending out some 6 million devices free of charge to customers in 2007 alone. Designs vary, but a common type requires that users insert their credit or debit card into the device and then a number (typically eight digits) is generated. The customer must type this number into a field on the transaction web page before the transaction can be processed.

All the major social networking sites are aware of the information exposure problem, but it does sometimes seem that their efforts are aimed more towards limiting their own legal exposure than to educating their members and implementing systems that protect those users from themselves.

Our Own Worst Enemy

Even so, I’m not sure how much we can blame them, when so many people refuse to apply the most basic common sense in their dealings with complete strangers in the virtual world. After all, a “friend” on a social networking site is nothing like the real-world friend you have personally interacted with for some time and with whom you have developed a direct, one-on-one personal relationship. Instances have been well reported in the media where the cool, chatty 14 year-old boy met online and invited round to listen to music turned out to be a middle-aged pedophile.

The frightening thing is that the victim doesn’t even have to give out his/her address in so many words. With the answers to a few apparently innocent questions the predator, whether a sexual deviant or an identity thief, could soon dig up everything he needs to make physical contact or successfully impersonate his target.

But I digress, because a sexual predator is more inclined to use different tools to the identity thief. For the latter the garrulous denizens of social networking sites make every day like Christmas.

Enjoy, but Stay Alert

If you’ve subscribed to my musings for any length of time you’ve heard it before and I guarantee you’ll hear it again:

The first line of defense is the human brain!
Keep it engaged when online.

Don’t get me wrong; there is no need to avoid social networking sites — that’s not what I’m suggesting all.

By all means enjoy whatever it is that your favorite social networking site has to offer for you. But for goodness sake be circumspect about what you reveal of yourself. Be aware of the problems you can create for yourself, or that your children can create for you and themselves. Almost all such problems boil down to revealing too much personal information.

In most cases your real name together with either your zip code, city or state is more than enough to reveal your full physical address and phone number, because other resources, such as online phone books, are also very good at what they do.

Once an address is established, or even an approximate location, the area can be checked out using online maps. Depending on where you live, it may even be possible to get a look at your house from the street, without ever leaving the computer. Ever looked up your address on Google Maps? More and more street level views are being added all the time. This is all very useful information to someone with iniquitous intentions.

Your date of birth, obviously an important part of your identity profile, consists of three parts: day, month and year. If you announced to the world that it’s your birthday, you’ve just given away two-thirds of the answer. Your photograph will narrow down the year to a manageable range and a couple of “Do you remember when…” questions can do the rest.

What about that hot V8 or lovable little mini that’s the light of your life? Got a photo of that online? With registration plate in full view?

Get the point?

If gabbing to other mouse-trap collectors for 12 hours a day is your thing, all well and good. Whatever makes you happy. What I’m concerned about is that you don’t put out too much cheese and attract rats you can’t handle.

In part two of this article I’ll discuss ways to improve the protection of your social networking home page. In the meantime, remember…

The first line of defense is the human brain!
Keep it engaged when online.

Wikipedia’s “List of social networking websites”

Google Maps

Related articles:

• Social Media Demographics: An Analysis of the Leading Sites
• Refrain Giving Information on Net to Prevent Identity Theft
• Fan Pages on Facebook: I Set Up Mine, Do You Have Yours?