Home / Blog
Written by: 10/18/2010 5:37 AM
How many friends do you have? I apparently have 106. I know this because Facebook tells me so. If I add to that the number of friends I have on MySpace that are not on Facebook, the number goes up to 116. This is not an alarming number. My relatives alone account for at least half, and the remainder are peppered with long lost reconnections. Those I don't know personally are just one degree of separation away from actual friends.
Then we have my friend Charlie. Facebook tells me that he has 687 friends. Now, in life, Charlie is a shy kind of guy who lives in a small town. Personable, witty, but a bit on the quiet side—and there is no way that Charlie knows even a third of those in the real world.
But Charlie plays games, and he needs those people in his Mafia gang, or his YoVille neighborhood, or his Roller Coaster Kingdom in order to get more points. Which is all well and good, but as a friend of Charlie, I get to see his two email addresses, his hometown, his phone number. I don't get to see his date of birth, but I know when it happened because there were numerous “Happy 35th” posting on his page last month. I know the date, and I know his age.
While all this may seem like the very point, the essence of social networking, it is also its greatest danger. Social networking sites give a false sense of community. We are all here, all hoping to alleviate some boredom or loneliness, all looking to make a connection, all trustworthy... except the social engineers that are there to get some intel.
Case in point: Facebook is once again at the center of a security breach scandal. Now every chicken lovingly shared through Farmville, every iced gangster through Mafia Wars, and every barn raised in Frontierville has strings attached. Of all places, I expect to be safe playing online games in my jammies in the comfort of my home office but...no.
According to Paul Ducklin of Sophos Australia, “Ten years ago, getting access to this sort of detail would probably have taken a con-artist or an identify thief several weeks, and have required the on-the-spot services of a private investigator. Sadly, these days, many social networkers are handing over their life story on a plate.” (Sophos 2009)
The scary part? My friend Charlie has reason to protect his data—because Charlie is a cop.
How about you? How many friends do you have?
Read more about the newest Facebook breach here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEADNewsCollection
0 comment(s) so far...