Privacy Means Profit: Prevent Identity Theft and Secure You and Your Bottom Line

Chapter 12. Defend Online Identity: Social Networking and the Cloud

Among the latest and most potent tools that enable fraud are the vast col-lections of personal information we accumulate, centralize, and share with the world in Web 2.0 applications like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, wikis, blogs, and other social networking sites. Protecting your identity doesn't stop at your computer; good privacy habits must extend into the online world.

Defend Mind-set

Spy networks build dossiers on their subjects until they know enough to manipulate and exploit them. As explained in Chapter 10, "Monitor the Signs," a dossier is simply a comprehensive collection of personal and professional information on a particular person. When we share that same information on a social network, even if it is only with "friends," or when we insecurely store that data on someone else's servers ("in the cloud"), we have effectively done the legwork for them.

There is no more appropriate place to apply the seven mind-sets of a spy than when sharing information about yourself on the Internet. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, you will never be fully in control of your information nor be able to accurately verify how your information is being used after it is stored and being managed on someone else's servers.

Before you share information online about yourself or your workplace, ask yourself this question: What would the consequences be if this information fell into the hands of ...