Business

SigEx Telecom :Social networks taget for fraudsters
by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu

In order to identify fraud by posting too much personal information on their profile pages,social networkers are opening themselves up, information provider Equifax said. Increasingly large amounts of personal information is becoming available to fraudsters and identity thieves, as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Friends Reunited and others are more and more accessed by people. Neil Munroe, external affairs director at Equifax, warned that "Fraudsters are taking advantage of the craze for social networking, and people do not realise the significance of the information they put out on the web and who may be accessing it.More and more consumers are signing up to these sites every day and the chances are they'll put on their date of birth, location, email, job and marital status.We do not want to stop people using these sites, but we do advise them to limit the information they make available to stop people stealing their identity." Chief security analyst at MessageLabs,Mark Sunner, told vnunet.com that the internet emerges a whole new level of social engineering."Many consumers have only just made their first foray into this new and exciting web 2.0 development.The last thing they will be expecting is that the same water which they treat as entertainment is already muddied with the kind of individual that makes a career out of identity theft, spam and phishing." Some tips to help avoid vecoming a target on social networkings are offered by Equifax: do not put common passwords, like date of birth; it is recommended to use privacy setting and let only your friends view the information; do not mention when you leave on holiday or informations which could ruin your chances of a new job; an last but not least, be wary of everyone, because photos and profiles are often decepyive.

by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu for SigEx Telecom (http://sigex.com)

SigEx Telecom is quickly becoming the leading telebroadcasting communications provider allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share video clips through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, websites, blogs, video-mails and SMS. SigEx Telecom captures many add-on services for its clients generating royalties and fees in a broad spectrum of marketing services including public relations and promotions.

posted by Blog TechSource @ 1:35 PM