Social networking sites ...
... an easy place to loose your identity. Social and community web sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, and to some extent YouTube and Flickr, have become enormously popular and big money spinners for their owners. They are also a goldmine for those who would steal personal identities. It is regrettable that these sites more or less encourage their members to record large amounts of personal information and to make this accessible to the wider public rather than to only their own small circle of friends.
My advice is not to use these web sites at all - if you are not a member you can't be abused through them. However, I can see the attraction in using them - even I look at YouTube (there are links on this web site) and Flickr. So what should we do to use these sites with safety?
The key is to cover up your identity to the maximum degree and disclose as little about yourself as possible. This includes in conversations with other members as well as when you sign up.
NEVER use your full name or even your full initials - that rules out Friends Reunited who solicit just about every piece of high risk information. I recommend the use of a nom de plume, a name that you use only for this particular web site. DO NOT enter your full address - you may wish to provide the name of the town you live in but I would be wary of that lest it provides sufficient information to help someone trace you.
NEVER provide your true date of birth. If it is a requirement then adjust the numbers a little. DO NOT provide your phone number, fixed line or mobile. Doing so will only result in unwanted harassment from salesmen of all kinds. Unwanted sales calls can be suppressed from UK sources by putting your number on the free Telephone Preference Service list but you won't be able to stop foreign calls.
Many services, as well as many banks and financial services bodies that should know better, will ask you for a variety of information which they use to confirm your identity when you phone them. The most common are your mother's maiden name and the name of your first school. Both these pieces of information are now discredited because they are so easy to come by. Further, there is a generation of young adults whose mother's never married and so continue to use their maiden names which may or may not have been adopted by their children. Schools are often easily identified from a site like Friends Reunited, the whole purpose of which is to look up your school friends. I recommend that when asked for your mother's maiden name you provide something different. If you wish to be entirely honest tell a bank or other official body that you have done this and why - because your mother's name is too well known. Just don't forget what name you have told them though! For school name I suggest corrupting the real name or give a different school altogether.
NEVER disclose your place of work - this could open you to blackmail. You could note your trade or profession but I wouldn't if it wasn't relevant.
DON'T provide your email address in a public place if it is not necessary. If you do, you will get hoards of spam messages. As a webmaster it is inevitable that one of my email addresses is known by default - webmaster@happy-valley etc. This, and similar addresses for my other web sites, produces about 100 spam messages every day. These are filtered out for me by the use of clever software but I'd much rather not get them.
AND ABOVE ALL never give any financial information to anyone via a social networking site, information such as account numbers, credit or debit card numbers and other similar information. To do so amounts to giving access to your accounts to the world's crooks.
In general avoid putting personal information on social networking sites - be careful to avoid telling others where you live, where you hang out, where you are going for your holidays, and so on. There must be plenty to talk about without giving identity information away. If you want to tell your real friends about these things do it privately with an email.
If you are already registered to a social networking site and wish to remove yourself you may find it difficult to do so. I suggest you go to the help page and look for information on deleting your profile.
If you think you may be compromised by information you have put on one of these social sites then tell your bank or card company. Ask them to give you a new account number; change information such as maiden names and schools. I also suggest you do this in person over the counter and re-identify yourself to the organisation so that there can be no doubt in their minds that you are bona fide. You should also obtain your credit records from the three main holders to check that your identity has not already been compromised.
Identity theft | Credit checking | Phone security
