Social Networking: The Dark Side

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Social Networking: The Dark Side

David Gewirtz

If you doubted just how huge social networking is, these statistics from Nielsen Company research will change your mind:

Almost 10% of all time spent online worldwide is devoted to social networking
More than 2/3 of the world’s Internet population visit social networking sites at least once a month.
Growth in “member communities” is twice that of the next five most popular sectors (which include, amazingly, search and email)
On Facebook alone, online time spent by more than 100 million users increased a whopping 556% from December 2007 to December 2008

Social networking is huge, all right. And, according to Cyberterrorism expert David Gewirtz, it can also have a huge dark side. The rapid pace of growth among social networking’s relatively young and undisciplined community attracts scammers and criminals.

“When it comes to social networking,” says Gewirtz, “it’s not what you know, or even who you know. It’s who knows you… If a criminal can easily find out where you are, what stores you frequent, what your daily habits are, who your friends are, and even what your personal food, entertainment, and beverage preferences are, you can be targeted with a level of ease never before possible.”

Gewirtz’s Special Report on the subject, The Dark Side of Social Networking, appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Frontline Security. The article explores the following issues:

Employment: how social networking can lead to career suicide
Reputation: how something you say now could haunt you for years into the future.
Malware, phishing and identity scams: how using services like Facebook and Twitter without caution could cause you serious financial loss
Physical security and stalking: how social networks give stalkers and other scary people an almost minute-by-minute update on your habits and haunts

Download a PDF of the David Gewirtz’s article, The Dark Side of Social Networking.

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