Are you friends with a rubber duck?

As discussed with the case study today in class, people are becoming far too laid back when it comes to social networking sites. When these sites were initially created, it was simply a way to share information with your friends. Now, these sites are a wealth of information for hackers. A recent study done by Sophos showed that even today, when security should be growing, people still don't hesitate to give out their information to complete strangers. In 2009, Sophos created fake Facebook accounts and friend-requested random strangers to see if they would accept. Two different accounts were made. One for a 21-year old single woman and one for a 56-year old married woman. The 21-year old requested 100 people in a group of 20-something year olds, and the 56-year old was in a group of 50-something year olds. 46% of the people contacted accepted these friend requests. This number has actually increased from what it was the last time this test was conducted. In 2007, only 41% responded to a request from a man named "Freddi Staur". The funny thing about both of these tests, though, is that the only pictures shown for the profiles of these accounts was a toy frog in 2007 and a rubber duck in 2009. Oftentimes you hear about fake accounts being created with a picture of a hot, young girl saying she met you last night at a party. In this case, the picture was of a toy, and yet almost half of the population still accepted these friend requests. Even more astonishingly, the numbers have increased in the last 2 years. An opposite effect has occurred with privacy settings, however. Facebook has been increasing their privacy settings substantially as of late because of hacking. The problem is even if you have very strict privacy settings, as soon as you accept a friend request, your friends have access to all of your information. This study showed that people who accepted the friend request gave away information such as their full birthdays, email address, and even phone numbers. As it was pointed out in the article, ten years ago, it would have taken hackers weeks to find this type of information on people by using private investigators, digging up information, even fishing in garbage cans. Now, people make it available for the entire world to see. The moral of the story is only post necessary information on your Facebook page, make your information heavily protected by privacy settings, and don't accept people you don't know as your friends.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141913/Facebook_users_fall_for_rubber_duck_s_friend_request?taxonomyId=82