O/T - Another reason to dump facebook...

Massive Facebook fraud scare as website accidentally publishes dates
of birth of millions of users

Facebook was at the centre of a massive ID fraud scare yesterday after
it accidentally published confidential information about its users.

In a huge breach of privacy, the social networking site disclosed the
dates of birth of many of its 80 million active users - even if they
had asked for the information to be kept secret. Although the details
have now been removed, there are concerns that internet fraudsters
could use the information to commit identity theft.

Facebook is one of the fastest growing and most popular services on
the internet.

It allows people to create home pages devoted to themselves, and then
swap pictures, news, trivia and gossip with a circle of friends,
family or acquaintances. Owners of a Facebook page can limit who has
access to personal details such as dates of births, phone numbers,
addresses and photographs. However, a test website of a new version of
Facebook made available to the public this week included confidential
details that should have been kept private.

The blunder was spotted by the computer security firm Sophos on Monday
evening.

'I was shocked to see people's full date of birth revealed, even
though I knew they had their privacy set up correctly to supposedly
hide the information,' said Sophos' Graham Cluley who discovered the
security slip. 'It's essential that users of social networks should
have confidence that their privacy will be protected - and it's
especially important with information like your date of birth, which
can be a golden nugget for a committed identity thief.'

Mr Cluley informed Facebook as soon as he discovered the flaw, which
now appears to have been fixed. 'It's good that Facebook fixed the
problem - but can people feel confident that this kind of mistake
won't happen again in future?' he said. 'My advice to Facebook users
would be, even if your date of birth is set to be non-visible, change
it to a made-up date in case this kind of blunder happens again.
'Facebook and other social networking websites need to be more careful
about protecting their members' data, or risk losing users.'

Security experts have repeatedly warned that Facebook and other
networking sites like MySpace and Bebo expose people to identity
fraud.

Many of the user profile pages contain personal information such as
pet names, children's names, favourite sports teams and work details
that could be used to guess passwords. Others carry dates of birth,
phone numbers and addresses. One Facebook user even publicised his
mother's maiden name on his site - information that is often used by
banks to confirm identity over the phone.

Last year, Sophos published results of a identity theft probe into
Facebook which uncovered that 41 per cent of users would divulge
personal information - such as email address, date of birth and phone
number - to a complete stranger. People who publish personal
photographs and potentially embarrassing information on Facebook are
also in danger of ruining their future career opportunities. Around
one in five companies admits to routinely trawling Facebook to learn
more about job candidates. A senior tutor at Cambridge University has
also admitted to using Facebook to check up on potential students.


http://tinyurl.com/6k7wgy

date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:21:31 -0700 (PDT) author: Ed