Identity 'at risk' on Facebook

Cuddles_In_the_Buff

I was telling Spikey that I was wary off using applications on facebook after hearing that they can be unsafe. He suggested I should post in this thread letting you all know.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.stm

Crazy_Jamie

This is fairly old news (with the article itself being posted in May), but is still worth reminding people about. Though like a lot of things on the internet, avoiding issues like this is mostly a matter of exercising common sense. A lot of the main applications on Facebook are made by the same companies, and as such are perfectly safe. Applications intended to steal identities and scam people should generally be quite straightforward to spot.

DatabaseError

BBC- " While we could not get all details, what we did get, included his name, hometown, school, interests and photograph,"

Fraudster -Hello, I'm Bob form Cambridge, can I have a loan.
Bank -Hello, Bob, can I have your address
Bob - Cambridge!
Bank - A bit more specific please
Bob - I went to cambridge community School and I like drinking!
Bank - and you live where?
Bob - er....

Looks like a bit of a non story to me, the beeb had invested in the story, found nothing, but published anyway.

aliEnRIK

Its more to do with common sense, the 'privacy' features and adding applications

Common sense is DONT display too much information (ie, addresses etc)
Make sure only FRIENDS can see the profile (Whilst bearing in mind, friends you DONT know could easily be scammers)
And apps have access to your information too (so again, be wary of ANY information thats put in your profile)

In fact the cleverest programme a dodgy scammer could make is a virus that once infected a persons profile would auto email all THIER friends AND allow the scammer access to all information on their profs, infecting them if they allow it to do so and so on.

Look out for bad spelling and anything out of the ordinary.....

DCFC79

Its not an issue if you dont display your address (ive a friend who has his address on his profile), if you dont display a mobile phone number or a landline number but as alienrik says its down to common sense,