Solutionary Minds - Your Information Security Blog Source

Social media rules. Facebook, Twitter, blogs everywhere. Part of it is the fascination with immediate feedback, and our attempts to connect with more people. Personally, I think it's good that we're trying to make the world smaller. This actually reverses a couple decades of society leaning towards social isolationism. But has the pendulum swung back too far?

People share everything. Late for dinner, shopping, bombed the test... even "going to the bathroom" are just a few examples of total TMI. But how do you really know what is too much information?

Consider how many people have been fired for bad (hrm... stupid?) Facebook postings or status updates. And even more companies use social media sites for screening job applicants.

Now put the same social media into the business world, and think about how much control you lose over available information. Sophos released the results of a study on the impact of social media. In a nutshell, companies that use social media sites tend to have more information available more easily, enabling "evil doers" to craft more effective and persistent technical and social engineering attacks. This is an information security nightmare waiting to happen.

A perfect example of the way a motivated person can use the sheer volume and type of information available on social media sites is by checking out pleaserobme.com. If you have not been there, and you care at all about personal privacy, the site is a "must visit." They grab information from social media sites, and match up information available from other social media sites. The site demonstrates how easy it is to do something like see a twitter post that "Janet" is excited that they have left for the airport to go on vacation, then taking that information, and digging up more detail about "Janet," including potentially a variety of personal information, including phone numbers, and Janet's home address. Then what?

Well, if a criminal, or angry/jealous ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse, or unhappy ex-employee KNOWS where you live, and that you are out of town for a week, that's not necessarily a good thing, is it? So, how much do you really want to share?

 

---