Fake Identities on Social Networks

Forget credit cards and social security numbers, a new lot of identity thieves will soon come after your web profiles, or says security firm Aladdin in their Annual Threat Report.

Post Information
- Date: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 Time: 11:34 am Discussion: View Comments Category: Product and Service Innovation Tags: identity theft, social media Print this blog post!

: Image by DBarefoot via Flickr

Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb writes:

According to Ian Amit, director of research at Aladdin’s Attack Intelligence Research Center, the potential damage for this new type of identity theft will be “devastating, both on the personal level by creating difficulties in employment, ruining social and professional connections, damaging reputations; as well as on a financial level, such as stealing customers, corporate data,”

To test their prediction, his team was able to set up fake online identities which ended up connecting to the real network of friends and acquaintances easily.

Every problem is also a great opportunity. There are a couple of companies out there already that will monitor a lot of social networks and user-generated content sites to catch fake identities. There is a real market out there, and I am just waiting for a M&A announcement by the Bank of America to add this kind of service to their portfolio…

■

Synthetic Identity Theft (bargaineering.com)

■

Video: Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft (ismckenzie.com)

■

Trust in the Cloud (loupaglia.com)

■

Breach Notification Laws (schneier.com)

■

Guard yourself against identity theft on social networks | Dallas Morning News | Pamela Yip (andcoffeetoo.blogspot.com)

■

Avoid Identity Theft: 9 Preventative Measures (lifehack.org)

blog comments powered by Disqus

Entries (RSS)
Comments (RSS)

31 queries.
0.545 seconds.

This Playout Intelligence blog post by Thorsten Claus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

All entries in this blog are my opinion and don't necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer or sponsors.

Except where stated, all materials contained in this Web site are the copyrighted property of Thinkstorm. Permission is granted to use, copy and distribute these materials as presented in this Web site for personal, non-commercial use only. All copyright and other notices must appear in all copies as they appear in the original. All other uses are prohibited. (please also see these two articles about “All Rights Reserved” and general copyright law, with some focus on the US).

This site contains links to other sites that are not owned or maintained by Thinkstorm. These links are provided for your convenience. Thinkstorm makes no warranties about the contents of or products and services offered by such sites.

Thinkstorm shall not be liable for any injury, claim or damage whether direct or indirect which arises out of the use of this site or its contents or the inability to use this site. Thinkstorm shall not be liable for any injury, claim or damage whether direct or indirect which arises from the unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmission unless it results from the gross negligence or intentional actions of Thinkstorm.

Playout Intelligence