RIGHT: I’ve decided to start a campaign to help improve people’s privacy & security on social media. After recently looking through random Facebook profiles of people I’ve never met before in the ‘People You May Know’ section, I was absolutely staggered to discover how much personal information that is publicly available just by looking through their profiles. Not to mention when I ‘Googled’ some of them, I found a staggering (and worrying) amount more with links to their other Social Media accounts and details about their personal lives. A fraudster would have a field day if they stumbled upon these profiles as there is more than enough information to clone someone’s ID or worse. Just some of the info available publicly: Names (that’s obvious) Age (and/or) Date of Birth (worryingly) Family Members Access to other Facebook Friends Which School/College/Uni they attend(ed) Job Title Place(s) of Work Towns They Live(d) in And even addresses and mobile numbers (very worrying !) And not forgetting access to all their selfies, family pictures & posts (Alarmingly !). I can only assume that people are unaware that their information is available for all to see, and have not checked/updated their privacy settings. My campaign is to raise awareness of privacy on Social Media to help prevent Identity Fraud. This can be done by getting as many people as possible to simply change their privacy settings. On Facebook, there is a new feature located in the top right corner under the padlock icon with the options ‘Privacy Check-up’ & ‘Who can see my stuff?’ where you can easily change your settings from the original default setting of ‘Public’ and change it to ‘Friends’. There is also a ‘Settings’ option just above ‘Log Out’ where you can do everything else manually. Facebook HAS changed their default privacy settings for new users to ‘Friends’ from May 2014, and only added the new feature above for existing users, so unless youve used it, everyone’s settings are still potentially set to the original default ‘Public’ setting. Please spread the word to all as I’m sure that most people are just unaware that their personal information is available to the masses and simply need to learn (hopefully the easy way) to be more privacy savvy. In my opinion, nobody should be able to view your stuff unless you actually know them and have added them to your Friends list, unless, of course, you are a company or organisation, where you need to get as much info about yourself out there to everyone. I’m going to see if the Police would be interested in driving this campaign in the form of an ‘Operation’ initiative to get this message into schools etc as it’s not Social Media platforms that are at fault, but simply our awareness and trust. I’m also considering writing to Meridian Tonight & BBC South Today to see if they would be interested in running a news feature, again, to help raise awareness before someone becomes a victim. Hope this helps.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 02:04:06 +0000
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