Facebook privacy has taken a step forward. Last week I wrote about Facebook Safety Tips, as privacy is becoming a key factor in the social networking world. Yesterday, Facebook announced that they would tighten up privacy in response to a set of recommendations made by the Canadian government (Facebook Privacy Announcement).

Here is the gist of the Facebook Privacy Changes that will be implemented in the next 12 months:

Identity monitoring is more than just monitoring your credit.

Why do so many of us believe that credit alerts will protect them from the ever-growing threat of identity theft? According to the Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov), credit monitoring detects less than 20 percent of identity theft.

I use an identity monitoring service called CSIdentity. To learn more about why I chose this service (and for a discount code to sign up, visit my identity theft speaker site. I don’t make any money if you sign up for the service – I give you the code only to easier for you to start monitoring your identity).

Having a great meeting planning guide can be a great time saver when attempting to plan any sort of meeting/conference.

Meeting planners have more on their plates at one time than just about any profession I’ve experienced. Who else spends months anticipating every minute detail leading up to an event only to find out that their work has just begun? And to discover that many of the rules have changed mid-course?

Putting together a successful meeting can be a stressful endeavor, which is why I have put together a “best practices” meeting planning guide, with 5 important tips for planning an “out of this world” meeting. These tips are strategic in nature – how to move from organizing speakers to hiring speakers that rock.

This guide will help you find new and creative ways to engage your audience, and provide you tips for creating a conference/meeting participants will never forget.

Best of all, I’m giving it away absolutely FREE! (Those of you have already been in my audience know that there is no such thing as FREE! There is always a catch, always a price when someone is advertising free goods. Sorry to make a teaching point here, but it’s my job. In this case, you are giving away your name and email address in exchange for the white paper. Hopefully your attendees think about this type of information leakage when they sign up for FREE offers.) If you find the meeting planning guide useful, please leave a comment about it here at my blog!

I just returned from doing an identity theft speech for the Department of Defense, and after the speech, a woman asked me a great question broader than just identity theft:

Do users of personal (not job related) email have a right to expect privacy? Does an email communication constitute a form of publication?

Email Privacy

Unless you own the servers that the mail is being processed on and transferred to, you have no right

Albert "Segvec" Gonzalez

Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin is the name that Albert Gonzalez gave to his scheme of stealing more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers from you and me. Today, Gonzalez, along with two unnamed Russian conspirators, was indicted in the state of New Jersey. Gonzalez, known by his alias of Segvec, was part of a cyber-crime ring that hacked into the computer systems of at least five major companies, including Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven, TJMAXX, Hannaford Bros. Super Markets and Dave & Busters.

This is likely the largest case of identity theft ever prosecuted, comprising more that 130 million card numbers

Tactics: Gonzalez and his conspirators reviewed Fortune 500 Companies, performed reconnaissance on their retail stores, determined weaknesses in their payment systems and then utilized malware (malicious software) to intercept credit card numbers, expiration dates and names as they were transmitted from company to company

The crimes occurred between 2006-2008

In the strangest twist, it turns out that Albert Gonzalez was an informant for the Secret Service… on a card theft case. He took part in an undercover operation dubbed “Operation Firewall” that netted the arrest of 28 criminals (excluding himself) in 2004. After the operation was completed, Gonzalez took on the nick (nickname) of Segvec, moved to Miami, and took up his criminal ways once again.

Facebook safety has a direct correlation to your business’s bottom line.

Facebook, and social networking sites in general, are in an awkward stage between infancy and adulthood – mature in some ways, helpless in others. On the darker side of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, scammers and identity thieves are drooling at the sight of this unchecked data playground. In contrast, most social networkers are addicted to all of the friendships they are creating and renewing.

There is no denying that Facebook and other social networking sites have a very luring appeal.  You can sit in the comfort of your own home and suddenly have a thriving social life.  You can look up old friends, make new ones, build business relationships and create a profile for yourself that highlights only your talents and adventures while conveniently leaving out all your flaws and troubles.  It is easy to see why Facebook has acquired over 200 million users worldwide in just over five years. Which is why Facebook safety is still so immature: Facebook’s interface and functionality has grown faster than security can keep up.

Unfortunately, most people dive head first into this world of social connectedness without thinking through the ramifications of all the personal information that is now traveling at warp speed through cyberspace.  It’s like being served a delicious new drink at a party, one that you can’t possibly resist because it is so fun and tempting and EVERYONE is having one.  The downside? Nobody is thinking about the information hangover that comes from over-indulgence: what you put on the Internet STAYS on the internet, forever. And sometimes it shows up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, in the hands of a prospective employer or your boss’s inbox. All of the personal information that is being posted on profiles — names, birth dates, kids’ names, photographs, pet’s names (and other password reminders), addresses, opinions on your company, your friends and your enemies — all of it serves as a one-stop shop for identity thieves.  It’s all right there in one neat little package and all a scammer has to do to access it is become your “friend”.

Follow these Five Facebook Safety Tips and save yourself the trouble…

5 Facebook Safety Tips

Facebook Safety Tip #1: If they’re not your friend, don’t pretend. Don’t accept friend requests unless you absolutely know who they are and that you would associate with them in person, just like real friends.

Facebook Safety Tip #2: Post only what you want made public. Be cautious about the personal information that you post on any social media site, as there is every chance in the world that it will spread beyond your original submission.  It may be fun to think that an old flame can contact you, but now scammers and thieves are clambering to access that personal information as well.

Facebook Safety Tip #3: Manage your privacy settings. Sixty percent of social network users are unaware of their default privacy settings. Facebook actually does a good job of explaining how to lock your privacy down (even if they don’t set up your account with good privacy settings by default). To make it easy for you, follow these steps:

1. Spend 10 minutes reading the Facebook Privacy Policy. This is an education in social networking privacy issues. Once you have read through a privacy policy, you will never view your private information in the same way. At the point the privacy policy is putting you to sleep, move on to Step 2.
2. Visit the Facebook Privacy Help Page. This explains how to minimize all of the possible personal information leakage that you just read about in the privacy policy. Once you understand this on one social networking site, it becomes second nature on most of the others. 
3. Now it is time to customize your Facebook Privacy Settings so that only information you want shared, IS shared. This simple step will reduce your risk of identity theft dramatically.

Facebook Safety Tip #4: Keep Google Out. Unless you want all of your personal information indexed by Google and other search engines, restrict your profile so that it is not visible to these data-mining experts.

Facebook Safety Tip #5: Don’t unthinkingly respond to Friends in Distress. If you receive a post requesting money to help a friend out, do the smart thing and call them in person. Friend in Distress schemes are when a thief takes over someone else’s account and then makes a plea for financial help to all of your friends (who think that the post is coming from you). As with all matters of identity, verify the source.

Following these 5 Facebook Safety tips are a great way to prevent an information-sharing hangover.

The best way to protect you and your children from Online threats is to educate yourself about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other online social networking utilities.  We recently published the Facebook Safety Survival Guide (with Parents’ Guide to Online Safety) with that exact goal in mind. Social networking is immensely powerful and is here for the long run, but we must learn to harness and control it.

John Sileo is the award-winning author of Stolen Lives, Privacy Means Profit and the Facebook Safety Survival Guide. His professional speaking clients include the Department of Defense, the FTC, FDIC, Pfizer, Prudential and hundreds of other organizations that care about their information privacy. Contact him directly on 800.258.8076.

According to the Christian Science Monitor and other reputable media sources, the marines have banned social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter. Currently, the Pentagon is reviewing its entire policy on the use of social networking sites. Can you imagine the enemy discovering troop locations or military tactical data via social networking? Ironic timing, as just a few weeks ago I was delivering an identity theft speech at the Pentagon and recorded a short video about this problem.

Facebook Privacy & The Pentagon

The Christian Science Monitor ran the following quote from a memo distributed Tuesday to all Marines:

The very nature of [social networking sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts [operational and communication security] personnel and the [Marine Corps network] at an elevated risk of compromise.

7 Hazards of Social Networking

Most of the risks of social networking fall into one of the following categories, which I call the 7 Hazards of Social Networking:

1. Impersonation. Does the social networking account (e.g., Twitter Account) belong to the actual person or company it is representing? For example, if you look at the Twitter account @johnsileo, you will see that my name is used to send business to a gentleman who is also an identity theft speaker. My actual account is @john_sileo. Whether this is considered social networking squatting or social networking identity theft, it’s impersonation.

Is there such a thing as Facebook Privacy? Or Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social networking/media sites? I’m not convinced that any of us really know the answer yet. I think we so-called privacy experts talk a big game, but the subject is still maturing, and definitely up for debate.

Who owns the data on Facebook? Who has access to the information stored in the Cloud? Are your Tweets admissible in court?

To register for the Webinar, please visit:

http://www.brighttalk.com/webcasts/4971/attend.

I look forward to having you participate.

Facebook Privacy?