SubscribeFREE EBOOK
Valid Email Required to receive free eBookSecurity Tips
Browse by Category
Privacy Is Dead, Identity Theft Prospers
Published: May 01, 2009My information is in lots and lots of different places. I sacrifice a lot of privacy because of the nature of my business. If I wasnt so dependant on eyeballs I’d live much differently. However to participate in society on any level, privacy becomes a dead issue. Accept it. Or live in the jungle in Africa.
A CEO of a major software company declares, “You have zero privacy, get over it.” In response, the FTC states, “Millions of American consumers tell us that privacy is a grave concern to them when they are thinking about shopping online.”
Do you agree? Is privacy dead? Do you share your “status” on Facebook? Twitter? 
Do you have a MySpace page? A blog? Do you post your family photos on any of the above, or on Flicker?
The statement, “You have zero privacy, get over it,” was made by Scott McNealy, former chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems, in 1999. That was 10 years ago. Before the phrase “social networking” or the word “blog” entered our lexicon.
Here we are in 2009, when that statement is 100 times more true than it was 10 years ago. When you ask people if they are concerned about online privacy, they respond with a big, loud, angry “YES!” Then they hypocritically use their Facebook pages to inform the world that they are about to go on vacation. Which means that the lights are off and nobody’s home.
It isn’t just web users voluntarily giving up their privacy, it’s also corporations and government agencies gathering data as a form of intelligence. This data might be used to sell you something or it could be used to protect us in the form of Homeland Security.
Our personal information can be bought and sold. “Information brokers” sell our data to anyone with a credit card. One of the largest publicly traded information brokers in the world is a company called ChoicePoint. Last time I checked, 
they had 19 billion records on file. And one of their biggest customers is the US government.
So even if you don’t update your Facebook status to tell the world you just made a tuna sandwich, chances are, your phone number, your most recent address, or even your anonymous chat handle can be found on Zabasearch.com or iSearch.com. If you’ve ever committed a felony, your data may be on CriminalSearches.com Heck, just Google yourself.
At least head to Facebook and lock down your privacy settings. You get to them from the Settings –> Privacy Settings menu.
If you are reading this, you are participating in society. The price you 
pay is sacraficing your personal identifying information in order to get an Internet connection, credit, a car, medical attention, to go to school or buy a pair of shoes. While many citizens scream against Big Brother and corporate America abusing their trust, many will also give up all their privacy for ten% off a new pair of shoes.
All this makes it very easy for criminal hackers to commit identity theft. They use this available data to become you. Since your data is already out there, you’d better invest in identity theft protection and make sure your PC is up to date with Internet security software.
For more information, I recommend You Have Zero Privacy – Enjoy It! by Mike Spinny, and Cyberwar’s First Casualty: Your Privacy by Preston Gralla and Why give up Privacy? by Bob Sullivan
Robert Siciliano, identity theft expert, discusses background checks.
Similar Posts
- 100 Million Facebook Profiles Published via P2P
Personal information on 100 million Facebook users has been scraped from the social media site and is being shared and download as a single file via what is called a Bittorrent. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. Facebook takes on the issue is the data that was scraped wasn’t private at - 10 Ways to Prevent Social Media Scams
The trouble with social media revolves around identity theft, brand hijacking and privacy issues. The opportunity social media creates for criminals is to “friend” their potential victims in order to create a false sense of trust and use that against their victims in phishing or other scams. It was big news when someone had their Facebook - America’s Most Wanted Teen
Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert Colton Harris Moore stole a bicycle at the age of 8 and never looked back. Now 6 ft. 5 in. and 18 years old, Harris Moore is suspected in over 100 burglaries in the Pacific Northwest. Recently he has been credited with stealing cars, speedboats and now airplanes (at least 3). - Social Media Banned, Creates Identity Theft Risk
Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert The Marines recently banned soldiers from using social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. This is for two reasons. First, because they fear that these sites’ lack of security may allow malware to infiltrate government computers. And second, they’re concerned about the potential for leaked military data. Military personnel - Facebooks New (and only) Security Feature
Identity Theft Expert Robert Siciliano So maybe you used a public PC to log into your Facebook account and you hit a button that saved your login credentials. Or maybe you received an email from what you thought was Facebook and you plugged in your username and password and got phished. Now someone other than you
One Response to “Privacy Is Dead, Identity Theft Prospers”
[...] reports Lexis Nexis, who owns ChoicePoint, an information broker I blogged about recently who was hacked in 2005, was just hacked again this week. LexisNexis Group notified more [...]