Social Networking Security

Social Networking Security is a very big deal nowadays. Facebook, the biggest social networking site at 350 million users as of Jan 2010 400 700 million (!) users as of May 2010--oh, forget it, just go to CheckFacebook.com so I can stop counting, has changed its privacy policy and default security settings several times since it was created. This means users must be more concerned about their identities and PII (Personally Identifiable Information) than ever before.

MySpace and LinkIn, though much smaller, still have issues that users must be aware of. And though there are several smaller social networking sites, these three provide us with the lessons to be learned to minimize leaking of our entire lives to the outside world.

Facebook is actually used in a number of social engineering studies, many at universities and colleges. The number of users is so big at 400 million plus, that researchers can do statistical studies and know that they have large enough population and sample sizes to work with. That's right, YOU are a guinea pig.

There are studies about whether teens are really concerned about privacy, how malware authors use relationships to infect users, methods of identifying you through your friends and other connections to your page, and many others scientific studies.

Social networking sites are quite a phenomenon and the growth they've experienced is testament to the fact that people, young and old, want to connect to each other. So, it's here to stay but that means we need to know how to protect ourselves as much as possible.

There are a few general tips I'd like to pass along:

• Anyone can Google your name and find a ton of information about you on these social sites so your drunken college party pics may live forever. This is true even if you delete your account because there is a thing called the "cache" that may still have a copy of your pages long after you think you've deleted them.
• Because these sites have so much information about you, lots of people troll for information that will allow them to sell to you, blackmail you, prosecute you, and a bunch of other distasteful "...to yous". This is why social networking security is vital.
• A couple of researchers have shown that even if you have everything private, there are ways to find out your name, address, phone, email, etc just by combining information they find on your friends sites! This is no joke; it can be done. Famed cryptographer, Bruce Schneier, has a little info and a link to the technical paper here.