(Anti-)social media

Data protection is at a premium on the Internet as much from the incautious attitude of many users as from hackers’ exploits. Open source intelligence online is now a rich seam that both white and black hat investigators mine, says Mark Johnson.

Mark Johnson has spent the last 35 years in the risk and security industry. For much of that time he was engaged as a Fraud Risk Manager with Cable & Wireless, Alcatel, Nortel and Ericsson. Since 2001 Mark has been running The Risk Management Group (www.trmg.org), which he founded to focus on communications and online fraud, and risk control consulting, training and solutions.

In late 2010, concerned about an increase in the number of burglaries facilitated by social engineering of victims via Facebook, insurers Legal & General (L&G) conducted a survey [1] to assess the willingness of people in the UK to share personal data with strangers online. The results were startling: 59% of men and 42% of women surveyed admitted that they had accepted friend requests from strangers on Facebook based solely on liking the other person’s photo; 13% of men and 9% of women had shared their phone numbers via Facebook; 9% (men) and 4% (women) had posted their home address.