Facebook friends or foes?

Online data thieves will jump at the chance to harvest even the most innocuous personal information. Here’s how to tighten up Facebook security.

By Rosemary Hattersly / Friday, July 02 2010

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As you may already have read in this month’s Broadband Diary on page 21, Facebook is in the news at the moment for its lack of transparency around security issues. Essentially, it’s up to you to ensure your information isn’t making it into the wider world if you don’t want it to.

A good example is the Facebook app that asks what single topped the charts the day you were born. I don’t mind admitting that my answer to this is one of those dated comedy tracks. But I’m not about to amuse Facebook’s entire Auckland network with its details, particularly when doing so narrows down my date of birth to a seven-day period. How many guesses does a hacker need to correctly ascertain and make use of my date of birth (DOB) on an official form, such as applying for a credit card? Not many, given those odds.

Changes to Facebook’s interface now promote the idea of searching, Friends Reunited-style, for old acquaintances based on school years. Again, you’re semi-publicly drilling down into the detail and then proudly displaying the results.

If you and five of your friends all went to the same school, it takes only one person to list their DOB for a snoop to reasonably deduce that you were all in the same school year.

( See next page for diagram.)

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