NightBlogger

Don’t click on email attachments. Don’t publish your date of birth or employment details on profile pages at Facebook and MySpace.

Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan reports that in recent months, banking clients have been warning her of a spike in fraud, much of it based on the use of stolen financial data. “There’s been a marked increase in the number of attacks and the number of successful fraud attempts,” says Litan, who plans to publish a formal report in December. “This is the busiest my practice has ever been.” Litan blames the attacks on the thousands of IT workers who have recently found themselves jobless, with the technical abilities needed to steal data or perpetrate fraud along with specific knowledge of their former employer’s IT systems. “In times like these, people need the cash,” she says. “You have disgruntled IT employees that leave companies, take customer records with them to sell them on the black market.” More

BBC—Children growing up alongside the rise of social networking websites may have a “potentially dangerous” view of the world, says a leading psychiatrist. Dr Himanshu Tyagi said sites such as Facebook and MySpace may be harmful. He told the Royal College of Psychiatrists annual meeting people with active online identities might place less value on their real lives. And the West London Mental Health NHS Trust expert added this could raise the risk of impulsive acts or even suicide.

“It’s a world where everything moves fast and changes all the time, where relationships are quickly disposed at the click of a mouse, where you can delete your profile if you don’t like it, and swap an unacceptable identity in the blink of an eye for one that is more acceptable.” He said: “People used to the quick pace of online social networking may soon find the real world boring and unstimulating. More

Facebook, the burgeoning social network, abruptly withdrew its support for Google’s Friend Connect, meaning that none of Facebook’s tens of millions of members could sign in to Web sites using Google’s new service. In the common social networks, people communicate, organize and socialize largely within sites — such as Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn — but not outside of them. This model, referred to in geek parlance as the “walled garden,” ensures that social networking sites get immense traffic and screen time from members, and the revenue that comes with that.

Many in the industry are proposing a different model, however, in which every Web site will have a social aspect. In this scenario, there will be no need for a person to confine socializing to MySpace or Facebook. People could tap into their information — contacts and pictures — as they roam the Web. The social networking sites would function more like a utility, storing a person’s contacts, photographs and other tidbits. More

Photo Jacob Bøtter
Jpost.com
Canadan authorities have launched an investigation into Facebook after four University of Ottawa law students complained the site breaches the law by disclosing personal information to advertisers without obtaining proper consent. The students allege in a complaint lodged Friday that the popular social networking web site has committed 22 violations.

“There’s definitely some significant shortcomings with Facebook’s privacy settings and with their ability to protect users,” said Harley Finkelstein, 24, one of the students behind the complaint. Canadian law mandates that information including address, sexual preference, birthdate and school attended cannot be disclosed without the user’s consent. On Facebook, users must specifically change their settings to keep that information private.

“If a 14-year-old kid in Toronto decides to join Facebook … and he decides to join the Toronto network, does he really know that everyone on that network - by default - will have access to his personal information?” Facebook refuted the claims, saying the complaint ignores key elements of the company’s policy.