Understand the new Facebook homepage and know your settings.

The new layout of Facebook’s homepage had some major navigational and privacy setting changes. You may find it harder to find a link that used to be there or find new features that you haven’t seen, but there are some key components to the new Facebook Homepage. As Facebook illustrates in their new homepage tour, there are 6 core components of the new home page: requests and notifications, news feed, bookmarked applications, online friends, account privacy and settings, birthday and event reminders, and Facebook chat.

Take 5 minutes to view the facebook homepage tour and review your privacy settings. While these three settings are very critical, they’re by no means the only privacy settings worth a look. You may think these sorts of items aren’t worth your time now, the next time you lose out on a job because the hiring manager found some inappropriate pictures or saw something inappropriate a friend posted on your wall, you may have second thoughts. But why wait until after a storm to buy an umbrella?

Visit the Facebook Help Page for more information on your privacy settings.

Yesterday, Google revealed its new social networking tool, Google Buzz. This is a new way to see status messages, picture updates, and Buzz messages of your friends straight through your Gmail account. In some respects, it is very similar to tweets and Facebook status updates, but with the technology and cross-promotion that only Google can deliver. Just as Facebook has tried to combine social media (profiles, messages, pictures, status updates) in one place, Google is attempting to do the same with your email inbox.

What can seem like an innocent way to update friends, if not used correctly, can post  personal and seemingly private information in both the public stream and for those in your geographic vicinity. Read more about Google Buzz and Your Privacy Settings here.

PC World has written an article discussing the the most pressing questions about Google Buzz. It touches on things like how advertisements will be targeted to you based upon your status updates. I can only imagine that this would be very similar to how they currently use the content of your email messages to place targeted ads on your gmail screen.

As with any social networking site, be vigilant, as what you post can be made public, not only to your close friends, but to the world. With any social media the main privacy issue to remember is that all posts are public, permanent, and exploitable.

Privacy Means Profit – On Shelves 8.9.10

Wiley & Sons has just announced final details on the release of my latest book, Privacy Means Profit. This book builds a bridge between good personal privacy habits (protect your wallet, online banking, trash, etc.) with the skills and motivation to protect workplace data (bulletproof your laptop, server, hiring policies, etc.).

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publish Date: 8.9.10 (August 9, 2010)
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN-10: 0470583894
ISBN-13: 978-0470583890

Available for Pre-Sale from Amazon

Excerpt: At breakfast on the morning of August 12, 2003, a small and profitable computer company thrived at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. By lunchtime, that same business was on its way to ruin. Within twelve months, thanks to the theft of personal and company information, a forty-year-old family-business-turned-software-startup was doomed and John, heir to the prosperous enterprise, faced the prospect of prison for crimes he didn’t commit.

Beyond the specter of prison time for John, the situation held dire consequences for his family and friends. There was a real threat that his wife and two young daughters might be separated from their husband and daddy if John went to prison. John’s parents, who founded the company in 1964, shouldered most of the financial responsibility for the dying business and experienced declining health from the resulting stress. In the end, the situation would expose a dark secret in John’s close friend, Doug, a recent partner in the business.

Don’t Miss John  as he discusses

Identity Theft and Identity Theft

Prevention on The Bill Handel Show!

Today, February 4, 2010 at 1PM Pacific Time.

Click HERE to Listen Live!

John Sileo became America’s leading Identity Theft Speaker & Expert after he lost his business and more than $300,000 to identity theft and data breach. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more about having him speak at your next meeting or conference, contact him by email or on 800.258.8076

I was recently featured in an article by the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin, New Zealand during my stay there. I discuss the importance of protecting you Identity, not only at home, but also when you travel. With over 9 million Identity Theft victims in 2008 alone, you can never be too careful!

One of the first things American public speaker John Sileo did on his return to Dunedin this month was buy a paper shredder.

Not that he is paranoid, he says, but this self-proclaimed expert on identity fraud does not take chances with personal information.

Click Here to read the entire article.

John Sileo became America’s leading Identity Theft Speaker & Expert after he lost his business and more than $300,000 to identity theft and data breach. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more about having him speak at your next meeting or conference, contact him by email or on 800.258.8076

Detection: Fraud and Identity Theft.

“Consumers are spending considerably more time on fraud Resolution, up to an average of 30 hours in 2008. This increase may be attributed to the increased sophistication of fraud schemes.”
-    2009 Identity Fraud Survey Report, Javelin Strategy & Research

Most cases of identity theft are discovered by the victim, which reinforces the importance of monitoring your various accounts for suspicious behavior. Here are a few of the most common warning signs for the detection of fraud, identity theft or data breach:

The Top 15 Ways Victims Detect Identity Theft

1. You receive a data breach notice in the mail from a company you do business with.
2. Your bills or statements are not arriving in your mail (or email) on time.
3. You notice unauthorized charges on your credit card bill or debit card statement.
4. You notice new accounts or erroneous information on your credit report.
5. You are denied credit for a purchase.
6. You receive credit card bills for cards you don’t own.
7. You are contacted by a collection agency about an item you didn’t purchase.
8. You receive bills for unknown purchases, rental agreements or services.
9. Businesses won’t accept your check or credit card.
10. You are unable to set up new banking, loan or brokerage accounts.

What began in early 2009 as a free ‘information network’ that offers users the ability to microblog may have already reached the top. A new CNN article discusses how the number of Twitter users has flattened out and even deccreased recently. In July 2009, the site had 21.2 million users which dropped to 19.9 users only 5 months later in December.

Some believe this slump is due to Twitter’s inability to keep up with its users and others are finding the site less and less useful. Perhaps people are less inclined to put so much personal information on the World Wide Web, knowing that everything you post is public, permanent and exploitable. Or maybe we’re just tired of seeing how boring the average person’s day is.

Click Here to read this entire article.

John Sileo became one of America’s leading Social Networking Speakers & Identity Theft Expert after he lost his business and more than $300,000 to identity theft and data breach. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more about having him speak at your next meeting or conference, contact him by email or on 800.258.8076.

What started in 1997 as a research project and a mission as the way to organize the world’s information has turned into the worlds largest search engine. Google has given anyone with an Internet connection access to more information than they realize. With such quick access to information, you need to be careful what you put on the World Wide Web and realize what is contained in your Google History.  Remember, posts – and searches -  are permanent. Here are a few privacy issues when it comes to Google:

1.    Google’s Cookie and Toolbar. When you use their search engine, Google places a self-renewing cookie with a unique ID number on your hard disk. As you search websites, Google records your surfing activity and saves your searches. There are ways to change your Internet options to stop the cookie tracking and you can learn more by visiting www.google.com/support/accounts/.Remember, nothing you do on the Internet is private; it is all tracked, aggregated, analyzed, sold and used for a variety of purposes (many of them good). The advanced features of Google’s new toolbar for Internet Explorer not only updates automatically, but it also tracks which websites you visit.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was interviewed just last week by Mike Arrington, co-founder of TechCrunch. They discussed privacy and how Facebook is looking to move forward in the future. Zuckerberg made some really interesting comments on Facebook, but I think the most prevalent to Identity Theft would be what he said on the progression of information sharing.

“People have really gotten comfortable, not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”

Zuckerberg also said that when Facebook began most people thought: why would I put any information on the internet at all? Now most users don’t think twice about privacy before making posts. Due to the Privacy changes Facebook made in December, your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. Many people feel that this is a contradiction to what Zuckerberg had said before — that Facebook privacy controls are “the vector around which Facebook operates.” With more than 350 million users on Facebook, privacy is more important than ever.

It is also imperative that we all understand that we don’t have to share that information. It isn’t just Facebook’s responsibility to look after our privacy, it is ours as well.

As we discussed in Electronic Information Privacy – Securing Your Job Part I, if you are an employee at a corporation, association, university or small business, you must realize that protecting electronic information and organizational data is vital not only to your company’s profitability, but for your job security.

Here is a crash course on how to promote information security within your company. The most effective way to build a Culture of Privacy is to break it down into 3 simple steps (most corporations skip the first step, dooming them to failure):

1.    Motivate the Individual. Train yourself, your employees and executives on how to protect identity and company information first. Learning the basic principles of privacy at an individual level is a pre-requisite for all subsequent forms of data security, and supplies the necessary motivation to apply the same habits at work. Each employee needs to overcome their own apathy, ignorance and inaction before they are equipped to protect corporate assets.  By making it personal, your executives and employees are acquiring the building blocks necessary to construct a corporate Culture of Privacy. Electronic information privacy training is good for their wellness, and is a means to a safer and more profitable end.