Social Networking Sites Leaking Personal Information to Third Parties
Social networking site have been a topic of discussion in security circles for some time now. Everyone has heard or read a story about how you should be careful about what you put on a social networking profile because that information could be used to steal your identity.
Well what about the information that is being leaked out of Social networking site in order to send advertisements out targeted for you. According to a study done at AT&T Labs and the Worchester Polytechnic Institute several social networking sites are leaking out personal information about you. They take information about you from your profile and your viewing habits, which are then stored in a cookie and used by data aggregators.
What does that mean? Well that means the social networking sites store who you are, what you like, and what you look at so that advertisers can target people that would most likely be interested in a product or service. That’s not all though, once they have this information they can track where you go and what you see when you’re not on the social networking site. If they have a tracker on another site you visit they will see you visited that site and can match your IP address to your social media profile. Which makes browsing the Internet less anonymous.
This is truly scary and bothersome. I know it’s a good way to make ads smarter and better targeted to a specific audience, but I don’t like my information being released like that. I am not worried about what the aggregators and advertisers are doing with the information I’m worried about how secure the information is.
This could be a security threat and could lead to people stealing this information and using it to steal identities. Many data breaches are a result of a company or organization giving information to a third party who ends up loosing it. I am sure that this type of information would he helpful in the pursuit of identity theft.
So once again be careful what information you put on your social networking site. The less a stranger can find out about you the better. Try not to use your full legal name and leave out your birthday or use a fake one when possible. Never allow yourself to give out information that could be a part of a security question, like the name of your pet or your mother’s maiden name. If your mom is on Facebook and has her maiden name as her middle name make sure she leaves it out, so people can’t just look for family and find it. Things like these can make your social networking experience a lot more secure.
Tags: ID theft, ID theft protection, identity theft, identity theft protection