I'm a fraudster, please be my Facebook friend [BT broadband office]

I'm a fraudster, please be my Facebook friend

Posted 29 August 2007 at 8:48AM by Simon Dickson in Doing business online

When people talk about privacy concerns and the social networking phenomenon that is Facebook, the advice is usually to restrict your most sensitive information to just your 'friends'. Of course, that falls flat when people start adding total strangers to their friends.

Security specialists Sophos set up a fictional Facebook profile for a small, green plastic frog by the name of Freddi Staur - an anagram of 'ID fraudster'. They invited 200 randomly selected strangers to become their 'friend': 87 responded, with 82 handing over potentially sensitive personal information. 'What's worrying is how easy it was for Freddi to go about his business,' says Graham Cluley. 'He now has enough information to create phishing emails or malware specifically targeted at individual users or businesses, to guess users' passwords, impersonate them or even stalk them.'

If you're among the estimated 4 million people in the UK using Facebook, it's well worth reading through Sophos's suggestions for appropriate security settings. Their advice is sound: why do you need to divulge your email address to anyone, for example, when Facebook has its own 'inbox' feature?

But even then, it all falls down if you take a profligate - and frankly, unrealistic - view of 'friendship' on these sites. Why unrealistic? Research by Swisscom, quoted by the Economist, found that a typical mobile phone user spends 80% of his or her time communicating with just four other people.

Tags: economist, facebook, ID theft, privacy, sophos, swisscom

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Comments

1. At August 29, 2007 10:15 AM, Craig Donaldson wrote:

Isn't this the same "paranoia" you posted not so long ago?
Its the same don't give out any details but as you know its human instinct when it comes to certain people and not common sense!
If you were bothered enough to stalk someone facebook is not the place to start! "not speaking from experience"

2. At August 29, 2007 2:12 PM, Anjanesh wrote:

I am waiting for comments of our in-house expert ; Patrick Coach on this.

3. At August 30, 2007 8:14 AM, Luke Beesley wrote:

Stats there also show most didn't accept him anyway. You can go almost anywhere on the net now, from low budget forums, to the high end sites such as myspace and still get the threat of personal security being put in jeopardy, but it seems these days that is what comes with the territory of sites where members of the public can interact with each other, we can only be thankful that most have the sense to be careful about who they tell personal details to. The internet is a dangerous tool, yet quite possibly a necessary evil for the working, and even the personal world. I think the most people that are scared about online threats, the more it will be affected. Being aware is all we can do.

4. At September 5, 2007 12:09 PM, John wrote:

I dont understand, what exactly IS this bookface or facebook, and what is the POINT of it all given that for years and years society has functioned perfectly well without it!

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