Facebook maybe one of the, if not the most, popular social networking websites over the Internet but because it offers a wellspring of personal information to people online this gives identity and cyber thieves a chance to steal information. And a security consultant just showed how easy it was for that to happen.
Ron Bowes, the security consultant, had uploaded a program he had designed that allowed him to scan over 171 million accounts on Facebook that were “open access”. The number of accounts he had downloaded information from were more than one-third of the total 500 million users in Facebook. After he downloaded and compiled the information, Bowes then browsed through the files to view the names, addresses, cellphone numbers, and other personal information of Facebook users.
Though many consider this showcasing of personal information to be harmless at first, they could still make the Facebook account owners more vulnerable to identity thieves and cybercriminals. Bowes also uploaded the information as a torrent file that could be downloaded anyone online, and there have been over more than 2000 people who have downloaded the file and uploading it again for others to access while there are more 9000 leechers actively downloading it.
A representative of the privacy watchdog Privacy International, Simon Davies, accused the social networking website for being negligent over the data mining incident. However, Facebook stated the information that Bowes downloaded had already been public in the first place so his efforts showed nothing new.
But in the light of the recent data breach in the popular social networking website, Bowes had proven a point that consumers and online account owners alike must better safeguard their personal information otherwise cybercriminals could use them for making unauthorized transactions. For example, identity thieves could steal credit card offers, especially those that were pre-approved, in the account owner’s mailboxes or trash cans and then use that information to get the rewards instead.
So essentially, social networking websites are similar to that of credit reports in that they list relevant personal information about the owner as well as if identity thieves gain access to the information the owner’s financial and personal lives would get compromised. And because users of social networking sites sometimes allow people they don’t even know to be “friends” with them and let them access their account, users in these sites make themselves all the more vulnerable.
Consumers and online account users are advised to limit the personal information that they show in public in these social networking sites if they have an account in them. And they should also be vigilant in safeguarding their personal information and making sure that their computer security and antivirus programs are up to date for good measure.
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