Comments on "Brits Risk Identity Theft Online - Survey"

In an article by Raju Shanbhag in INFOTECH,  the writer is charging the Brits of complacency regarding online security. Well, not so much charging, as quoting a press release by BullGuard - a computer security company.

BillGuard press release

Anyways, the complacency is centered around these main issues - positing personal information in social networks, information related to:

1. Personal information that can be used to guess answers to security question, passwords etc.
2. Pictures of high value items.
3. Location related information.

Anyone should be careful about what they say - in general - and what they post online - in particular.

Posting a picture of a gold ring, on the kitchen table, with a note say "we're out, leaving our jewelry on the table, be back in a few days (btw - we live at 33 shouldknowbetter road, lamevill)" is not a smart thing to do.

However, criticizing the act of sharing personal information in social networks is rather old school. Sharing personal information is the very essence of social networks. 

If anything should be changed, it's the silly form of security questions. It may have been considered appropriate in the past, when information such as where you went to school was considered private info. Probably not too secure - but it covered some asses. Nowadays, this sort of information should be considered private shared info, and as such it mustn't be used for security measures.

The comedians behind this sort of security questions have got to come up with new material...

By jlcalgary

(I'm not saying anything bad related to BillGuard - as far as I know they are great. It's the attitude towards social networks, privacy and security that must change)