Users are their own worst enemy...

Here is the results of a survey by Consumer Reports:


• A projected 1.7 million online households had experienced online identity theft in the past year.
• An estimated 5.4 million online consumers submitted personal information to e-mail (phishing) scammers during the past two years.
• Among adult social network users, 38 percent had posted their full birth date, including year. Forty-five percent of those with children had posted their children's photos. And 8% had posted their own street address.
• An estimated 5.1 million online households had experienced some type of abuse on a social network in the past year, including malware infections, scams, and harassment.

Here is the opinion of the author:

"
Businesses should have policies in place to govern the use of social networking on company computers or network resources. I don't recommend a complete ban per se, but users should be given boundaries regarding which social networks they can or can't visit, or the amount of time spent conducting personal business on social networking sites.

More importantly, users should be educated to raise awareness that seemingly innocuous information shared on the Web can still compromise security. For example, if you post on Facebook that you're astrology sign is Virgo, then you send out a Tweet about how you were born the same year that JFK was assassinated, then share a comment online that 28 is your lucky number because it's the date of your birthday, it is possible to combine all of those tidbits and derive that your birth date is August 28, 1963.

Similar deductions can be made regarding business-related data. As secretive as Apple is about its product development and launch dates, rumors are circulating that the iPhone 4.0 will be launched in June based on the fact that AT&T employees have shared that all vacation and discretionary time off for that month has been banned.
There is also peripheral risk of compromising information through family and friends. A company vice president may have the common sense not to post any details of an upcoming merger prior to the official announcement, but if that executive's spouse posts a Facebook status update alluding to a huge windfall, or new management others can still put two and two together."

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