Facebook, Twitter Prone to Identity Theft: When Sharing Personal Information Crosses the Line of Safety

In light of our celebration of Fraud Awareness Week this week, we are taking a closer look at social networking site Facebook and micro-blogging service Twitter and other similar websites and how these sites, though popular among many, are actually prone to providing criminals with enough personal information about users to commit identity theft.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the website, along with other similar social networking sites are going to help usher in a new and unprecedented trend in sharing among users, one that isn’t just real-time, but also of greater volume. He predicts that as Facebook grows ever more popular and more people continue to patronize it, people are going to share more information about themselves, their activities and their preferences.

This is quite a bit alarming since we’ve also received word that identity crime is increasing. Two things seem to be helping cyber criminals along. One is that as technology is getting more sophisticated, these criminals are becoming more cyber savvy; and two, people are sharing more and more personal information on these social networking sites, making it easy for identity thieves to access personal information and commit their brand of crime.

In the past year alone, the cost of identity crime in New Zealand has soared to $200 million - a staggering amount. National Cyber Crime Center’s Detective Sergeant John van den Heuvel said that people freely posted information on the internet – from their date of birth to their pets’ names, where they worked and what they did.

This breach in security is also compounded by the fact that these social networking sites also have weak security, and often users do not even bother to avail of that security setting, leaving them susceptible to phishing scams and identity crime.

So, a word of caution to the trigger-happy micro-blogger or the enthusiastic status-updater slash photo-poster, be careful what you share about yourself on the internet, and filter the people whom you add to your circle of friends. If you do not know them, do not add them. And if you’re not sure that the information you want to post can be compromising to you in any way, don’t post it. If you can’t help it, then familiarize yourself with the site’s privacy settings and protect yourself as much as you can.