אל תגלשו בצורה עיוורת
That is to say they will share, well, just about any information on their pages.
The risks are real. From inviting tailored phishing attacks to offending potential employers with one’s late-night party habits, of course this would never happen to such a professional as, say, myself.
So why are so many tech-savvy dudes and dudettes spilling their beans on these things?
Roger Thompson, chief research scientist with AVG, believes that his credit card company has incorporated data from his Facebook account into his credit card file.
He told about an incident in which he had to verify information about himself for security purposes, and one of the questions was about his daughter-in-law — information that is only publicly available on his Facebook page.
Some credit card companies and financial service companies are developing algorithms based on an account applicant’s online friends. Losers tend to associate with one another.
Dallas Lawrence, chair of the digital and social media practice group at Levick Strategic Communications, told the E-Commerce Times:
“2009 was a watershed year for social networks, with the numbers of people joining or expanding their use of these sites…The next stage, I believe, will be companies taking all this information [and] combining it with new search tools in order to sort through the trillions of data points available.”
The ability for online ad and data collection companies to track users online may come as a shock to the average Internet surfer. By and large, companies are rarely able to connect a specific individual with the online surfing habits which they eagerly gather. All of that changes, though, when someone visits their social media sites.
Until recently, such companies were able to collect only data that was anonymous. The social networking sites provided the missing link.
Advertisers can now conceivably track who’s surfing which medical sites or who’s looking for bankruptcy attorneys.
This sort of information, obviously, proves to be very important to the online advertising industry.
The moral of the story…don’t surf blind.
