Fun Facebook applications, including ‘Your Stripper Name’, ‘Your Pornstar Name’ and ‘Your Superhero Name’ are the latest source of information being targeted by fraudsters seeking identities to exploit.
These Facebook tools use the combination of pet name/street name/mother’s maiden name to generate ‘Your Stripper Name’ which is then displayed on the user’s profile. Couple this information with full name, date of birth, geographic location and often phone numbers and email addresses, and an identify fraudster has easy access to a wealth of information.
In the UK the first case of Facebook sourced identity fraud has occurred. The information gleaned from the Facebook profile was enough to fraudulently create a mobile phone contract.
While banks rarely use these identifiers as security questions, many bank customers do use a combination of these answers as passwords for web based email and internet banking. Once these services are compromised a fraudster could have unfettered access to an individual’s personal and financial information.
With more than 30 million Facebook users and more than 800,000 in Australia, will we start to see personal information freely displayed on social networking sites being used in local fraud cases?
1 comments:
Facebook is an interesting phenomenon. Recent articles refer to banks (St George) enabling access through the work environment to attract Gen Y's. What is the risk of the dark side of law using Facebook as a means of recruiting staff within banks to assist in fraud?
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