Graham Cluley says people are sharing too much personal information
on Facebook.
Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control, today
announced that it has published a new podcast
discussing how people are not properly securing their personal and
private information on the Facebook social networking website.
Today, Sophos experts published research revealing that 41% of Facebook
users were happy to reveal all to potential identity thieves.
In the podcast, Graham
Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, is interviewed
by Carole Theriault about how innocent users were duped into
divulging personal information - such as email address, date of
birth and phone number - to a small plastic frog.
"It's alarming to hear about some of the information people were
prepared to share with a complete stranger online, when they are
sent a friend request on Facebook out of the blue. Facebook's
privacy features actually go far beyond those of many competing
social networking sites, but users are simply not choosing their
privacy options carefully and have not learnt how to behave safely
online," said Carole
Theriault, host of the Sophos podcast. "All the security in the
world is next to useless if you accept a friend request from a
small plastic frog. This podcast highlights the information that
can be stolen from Facebook users who haven't properly secured
their identity online, and how people can better defend themselves
from identity theft."
Simply click on the arrow above to stream the
podcast through your browser. Alternatively you can download
it to your MP3 player.
Freddi Staur, a plastic green frog, was able to
access personal information about people on Facebook.
All Sophos podcasts are available for download at www.sophos.com/podcasts. Previous podcasts have
covered topics such as image spam, phishing, Microsoft Windows
Vista, zero-day threats, managed appliances, corporate security
policies, network access control, web threats, and rootkits.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.