The perils of popular Facebook

Facebook is free. This means that anyone can sign up and disguise
him/her self to be whoever he/she decides to be. The first thing to
realise is that people might not be who they actually say they are. You
might think you are conversing with a certain person age x however in
reality this might not be so. Why would people want to do this? There
are various reasons why – not all of which are good and therefore any
enthusiast of social networking tools (such as Facebook) must be aware
of this. Don't trust who other people say they are - and this goes for
all ages. The bottom line is that it is a fantastic tool for social
engineering which in simplified terms means using the "art of
deception" to obtain what is normally personal privileged information.
Pay attention to who you accept as being your friend.

Next, the issue of privacy comes into play. By uploading pictures of
yourself and friends of yours you are publicly saying that these can be
shared. For obvious reasons your friend might have not wanted to share
some embarrassing photos. Unknowingly you might have even put your
friends reputation at stake. It's easy enough to pull pictures off
Facebook - but let’s remember that the Internet caches pictures and
once uploaded it is difficult to be certain that a previously uploaded
picture indeed cannot be found any longer. Avoid mapping your life or
that of others to Facebook or similar tools and upload stuff that you
feel is safe to share with the world.

Next in line we also ought to be aware that human resources (HR)
departments are now using tools like Maltego from Paterva. Maltego is
one example of a tool which can be used to determine the relationships
and real world links between people and websites (amongst many other
things) and graphically display it. One might have a perfect academic
record, however having personal pictures publicly showing off an
embarrassing side of you could and probably will reflect badly on your
curriculum. So before you 'flame' someone online, remember that if its
on the net and there is your name to it, there is a very good chance
that search engines will pick it up with a simple search. Remember that
it’s becoming common practice for HR departments to cross-reference
people before interviews.

Facebook Applications: I receive a tonne of invitations from various
friends of mine to install particular applications that have all sorts
of bells and whistles attached to them. Some are cool and fun to have -
others claim to let you know things like who viewed your profile -
something which actually goes against the privacy rules of Facebook.
These small applications are third party programs the intention of
which is not always good as they sometimes aim to capture some
information which breaches your privacy and usage policies. The issue
here is that we get so inundated with requests to install applications
that habit gets you accepting them all - the end result being that
you're not really paying attention to what sort of application you've
actually clicked on and installed. Consider these programs as mini
programs which function within Facebook - and there always is a catch -
so read the small print before you install any sort of application. Be
aware that Facebook does in fact prompt you for your consent to share
personal details – so vet them before blindly clicking away.

Last but not least - never share your password with anyone.
Unfortunately passwords alone are a very weak form of security and
there are countless reasons one could give which go beyond the scope of
this article. The last thing you would want is to have someone else
login to your account and change some personal detail of yours to
something embarrassing. Alas passwords depend on human nature and being
complex it has a lot of design flaws/features therefore its good to
keep in mind that passwords can be easily compromised and that they are
certainly not intended to be shared.
It is not my intention to paint a dark picture about Facebook or any
other social networking tool, rather the scope of this article is to
promote awareness of some of the consequences brought about by not
being responsible when posting or replying to people online. If there
is one thing that I'd like you to take away, it would be a typical
mindset such as "When online, responsibility is paramount - respect the
privacy of others and pay attention to who you trust"