I was watching the television the other day and my favorite celebrity talk show host talked about how someone is pretending to be her in MySpace. According to her, someone created an account in MySpace using her name and her personal information, and regularly updates her status according to her schedule. That person even posts blogs and bulletins that sound so much like her that it actually fooled some of her friends into thinking that they were really in communication with her. Luckily for her, a personal friend congratulated her for joining the online world by having her first social networking account. Thats when she found out that she has an impostor online. Talk about identity theft in style.
Should you be alarmed by this little incident? If you are not, then you should be. According to security firm Aladdins Annual Threat Report for 2008, there is an increasing incidence of identity theft through social networking channels. It warned that people who do not have accounts in social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and hi5 render themselves prone to identity theft. To prove their point, they set up fake social network accounts for each other and found that they were able to make connections with real people associated with the people whose identities they stole. Whats frightening is that they can destroy their victims relationships with anyone with just a simple comment, or message. Indeed, social network identity thieves can make their victims lives miserable by ruining their reputation and image to social and professional connections.
So whats the lesson in this? Protect your online persona by creating accounts in major social networking channels. However, do not be so forthcoming with your private details. Since you need an email account to open an account, use a disposal email address or create one specifically for social networking sites. Under no circumstances should you use personal or work email address to register in social networking sites since it would be fairly easy to trace your email address, address, and other personal information. Again, you do not want your identity to be such an easy game for identity thefts out there.
Be wary of giving private information in your social network profiles too. Do not reveal your full name, complete address, and phone numbers. And dont reveal your exact birthday, too! Its fairly easy for identity thieves to use this information to gain access into your account. If you want to go to the extreme, do not mention anything about your civil status, family, and employment. Again, its easy to piece such details together and create a new you.
More importantly, use the privacy settings of social networking sites. Some let you decide whom to show your profiles to. Only show your profile to friends and make sure that they are your friends. Do not accept friend requests from just about anyone. Report any abuse that you encounter, or any spammer for that matter. You can also block users if you want to. In short, be very vigilant in keeping your identity private. Its the only way to protect your identity.
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