The Gown – student newspaper at Queen's University Belfast.

COMMENT: Ever heard of ‘Bongo’? It has probably heard of you…

Most of us wouldn’t think twice about the details we put up on our social networking sites, be it Facebook, Bebo or Twitter. However, are we careful enough about what we choose to divulge online?

BY RUTH MAGENNIS

The Internet is swamped with the personal information of millions of individuals; even employment details and university records are easily accessible. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the current mobile craze “Bongo”. The brainchild of Impulse Business Solutions Ltd, the company advertises that, if a text is sent containing someone’s full name and town to the advertised number, a text will come back containing personal details such as age, schools attended and current jobs. Impulse state that the information is legally obtained from online resources, although many people swear that Bongo includes details that they never mentioned in their networking pages – or at least they thought they hadn’t.

Facebook’s security measures may be more extensive than its cousin Bebo, but it can’t prevent human mistakes. Fraudsters can easily manipulate user’s behaviour –called ‘social engineering’ – so that they give out personal data. In an experiment, security firm Sophos created a Facebook profile under the name “Freddi Staur” and randomly sent 200 friend requests to members. Out of 200, 82 ended up giving “Freddi” access to personal information such as email addresses, dates of birth, addresses and even current phone numbers. Frequently, users don’t give much thought as to the identity of so-called ‘friends’ – a potential stalker can duplicate the page of a member’s friend quite easily, and most people add the person to their friend’s list without checking closely who they are.

Often fraudsters resort to “phishing”, which describes any attempt to gain personal data. They can create fake websites that may look exactly like a Facebook or MySpace login page and which then direct you to the site. Many people use the same login details for all their online dealings, so once the details are typed into the fake page, potentially not only your Facebook page but your Paypal, ebay or email accounts can be hacked. The simplest way to avoid this is to check the address bar. A secure website will begin with ‘https://’ while a fake website will not. Hackers rely on the fact that most people won’t check this, and take the page at face value.

Be equally careful when checking emails. Never open mail from unknown senders, and avoid clicking on any links to websites you don’t fully trust. It could be a way of downloading malware onto your system, such as keyloggers, that can record whatever the user has typed in – including passwords and personal details.

Tags: Bebo, bongo, ebay, Facebook, Gown, newspaper, Paypal, qub, Queen's, queen's university, Ruth Magennis, student, The Gown

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.