College Identity Theft Speaker

I’ve got a neighbor who’s going back to college this week and reminds me that this is by far the highest risk group for identify theft and it’s for a couple of reasons.  When these kids are going off to college, it’s the first time they are getting true financial independence, which might never have been trained to handle.  They have access to credit cards, to new bank accounts, and they’re managing it themselves.  That’s a huge red flag that there’s going to be trouble.  Number two, they’re going into an environment where their stuff is not particularly protected.  They’re in a dorm room, they’ve got roommates that may need extra cash; they know they can take advantage of them.  So it’s kind of a high risk environment.  The third reason is because they do so much online.  There’s so much social media interaction and that’s where ton of information is stolen. So you need to take some of these steps that are in this blog post.  Help your students take them.  It will help them out not just this year in college but helping them build their financial future going forward.  Your identity is pretty much everything in terms of your net worth. You got to take care of it now.

John speaks professionally about social media privacy and identity theft to college students.

7 Steps to Stem Facebook Privacy Bleeding

Why You Should Share Facebook Privacy Settings with Friends

A true friend does more than just post updates about their conquests on your wall. They share information with you that makes your life better, even if it isn’t exactly what you want to hear. And you do the same for them. But are your friends unwittingly sharing too much information about you with others (strangers, advertisers, app developers, scammers)? Probably. For example, if they (or you) haven’t customized your privacy settings lately, you are giving Facebook permission to:

  • Publish your name, photo, birth date, hometown and friend list to everyone?
  • Indirectly share your restricted data with outsiders through your friends?
  • Let your friends check you in to embarrassing locations where you aren’t?
  • Post your Likes as advertisements on friends’ walls using your name?
  • Authorize Google to index, access and share your information on the web?

Taking simple steps will make a significant difference. Start with the 7 Facebook Privacy Settings below and ask your friends to do the same. It benefits their privacy and yours. The video to the left quickly walks you through how to get to each level of privacy setting. If the video is too small for you to see the pointer, simply click on the four arrows in the bottom right-hand corner of the video viewer (to the right of the YouTube logo) to view in full-screen mode. For better resolution, use the drop down menu to switch to 720 HD.

Facebook Apps Leaking Your Information

A report was recently published claiming that nearly 100,000 Facebook apps have been leaking  access codes belonging to millions of users’ profiles. Symantec released the report and said that an app security flaw may have given apps and other third parties access to users’  profiles. Facebook maintains that they have no evidence of this occurring.

In their report, Symantec wrote:

We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage. We estimate that over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties.

These “access tokens” help apps interact with your profile.They are most often used to post updates from the application to your wall. When you add the applications to your profile you, as the Facebook user, is giving the apps access to your information by accepting their conditions.  According to the investigation, these tokens were included in URLs sent to the application host and were then sent to advertisers and analytics platforms. If the recipient recognized the codes (meaning they have to be qualified to read and write HTML code), they could gain access to the user’s wall’s and profile.

Facebook Nigerian Scam Costs Victim $300,000+

At this point, we are all pretty used to the classic Nigerian Scam. Someone who is recently wealthy needs your help to gain access to the funds. They will let you keep $1 million if you will simply send them your bank account number so he can transfer $30 million to you. Its a dream come true to most!

What happens when that same scam is used on Facebook by one of your friends, by someone you trust? The results can be disastrous. One woman was scammed out of $366,000 because she felt sorry for the scammer’s sob story. The woman contacted the local authorities after realizing she had been conned by her Facebook “friend”. Police arrested six male suspects in Kepong, all allegedly connected to the Facebook scam: two Nigerians, two Bangladeshis, and two Malaysians. Investigators only managed to recover $5,000 in cash of the victim’s money, although they also seized 18 ATM cards, seven cell phones, and a laptop.

At least in this case the men were apprehended. In most scams of this nature there is no chance of finding the scammers and the money is long gone. Even when one of your Facebook friends asks you for something (money, help, information), your first reaction should be healthy skepticism. Verify that what they are saying is true (call them before sending money). Often times, a thief will take over a friend’s account or create a false account in order to gain your trust and eventually, your money.

CIA Uses Facebook Surviellance (The Onion :-)

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5 Steps to Avoid Facebook Destruction in Business

How should my business balance the risks of social media with the rewards of this increasingly dominant and highly profitable marketing medium? That’s the very insightful question that a CEO asked me during a presentation I gave on information leadership for a Vistage CEO conference.

Think of your move into social media (Facebook/Fan/Business Pages, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) like you would approach the task of helping your fifteen-year-old daughter prepare to drive on her own. You love her more than anything on earth and would do anything for her (just like you will go to great lengths grow your business), but that doesn’t mean you just hand her the keys. Trying to forbid or ignore the movement into social marketing is like telling your teen that they can’t get their license. It isn’t going to happen, so you might consider putting down the denial and controlling those pieces of change that are within your power. The task is to maximize the positives of her newly bestowed freedom while minimizing any negatives; the same is true in social media.

Here’s a simple plan to follow that will help keep you safe and productive:

Facebook Can Use Your Photos in Their Ads Without Permission

Did you know that Facebook can use photos you post on the site in advertisements targeted on the right (advertising) side of your contact’s profile?

Unless you customize your privacy settings, Facebook can share just about anything you post with just about everyone. Using your intellectual property for their financial gain is not a new Facebook issue, but one that should be revisited due to recent Facebook Privacy changes. Here’s the funny part: you gave Facebook the right to use any of your content in any way they see fit when you signed up for your account and didn’t read the user agreement. If you visit the Facebook Statement of Rights page you will see the following:

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

  1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

2010 Identity Theft Statistics Released

The 2011 Identity Fraud Survey Report by Javelin was just released, and it shows new trends in identity theft. While the report states that identity theft cases have decreased overall, it is costing consumers more time and money. The good news is that the drive to increase awareness about identity theft is working.

Meanwhile, consumer costs, the average out-of-pocket dollar amount victims pay, increased, reversing a downward trend in recent years. This increase can be attributed to new account fraud, which showed longer periods of misuse and detection and therefore more dollar losses associated with it than any other type of fraud. – Javelin Strategy & Research

The cost to resolve identity fraud issues rose dramatically in 2010 because there was a change in the type of fraud that was being committed. New Account fraud is on the rise and this is the hardest type to detect and costs the victim the most. The majority of thieves who use friendly fraud, where they target friends and relatives they know, are able to do a lot of damage by setting up new accounts in the victim’s name. Since the victim has no idea that they are a victim, they can continue to use their identity longer, which racks up more financial theft.  

Facebook Safety: New HTTPS Facebook Settings

Facebook has announced that they will be rolling out a new security feature that will add full HTTPS support to the site. The new secure site uses the same underlying technology that banks use to keep your communications out of the reach of potential hackers. While many people don’t have this feature yet and mine just showed up today, eventually all users should have the capability.

To enable HTTPS, log into your Facebook account and at the top right go into Account -> Account Settings.

Once there, scroll all the way to the bottom and click “change” next to Account Security.

The following screen should pop up. Check the box under Secure Browsing. You can also check “send me an email” (or a text message to your cell phone, which I don’t advise giving to Facebook) so that if someone tries to log into your account from a new computer, Facebook will immediately alert you. This is a good way to find out fast if your account has been hacked.

How to Keep Your Facebook Secure by Enabling HTTPS

Facebook rolled out these secure settings to make Facebook seem safer, but like many of their security changes, they are turned off by default. You must go in and manually change the feature to gain the added security.

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