Social fraud is pretty easy nowadays

Well, this post in a direct reply to yet another blog post that I written and that was about Facebook being the home of forgotten passwords.

Social Networks are a place to meet people that you might never ever know and that is true, you never know who the other person is on the other side. With the likes of Facebook and MySpace, it is so easy to be accepted as a friend on their profile.

Basically, what this means (Not including limited view on Facebook right now) is that you can see whatever details they have put such as birthdays. If you remember of that last post I did, that was a key on getting access to someone domain etc.

Well, you might also notice on Facebook that adding apps, it asks you should you want to accept that the app is able to access your data. An app such as a harmless “Rate your friend” could turn into “Rate your friend & Profit for them”. I say profit for them as that app can easily save your address and other details about you and then sell it on to whoever wants it.

It is common for e-mails to be sold over the internet and this results in spam in your inbox. Your address could be sold and this could result in more spam to your home or even worst, another “you” walking around.

If you want to stay safe, only add friends. Don’t put down details you don’t want anyone to know and remove ads you no longer use. Facebook etc should make it so that the apps reports back how much data is has about the person but then again, that won’t be hard to bypass.

Stay safe on the internet 😉