So back to Facebook. Well, everyone else is talking about it…

A posting by Matthew Stibbe over at Bad Language got me thinking about about the security side of this popular social networking site. Then today I heard that my mum had been a victim of credit card cloning for the second time in a year. As everyone knows, two and two make five, so here’s a blog post combining these issues.

If I was a scammer (I’m not), I’d be seriously looking at Facebook as a potential source of income.

How? I think I’d try to take advantage of people’s natural tendency to want to add ‘friends’. I’d create a fictitious identity and try to add unsuspecting strangers as my friends. I reckon the line “don’t you remember me from school?” would get me surprisingly far.

Once I’ve got someone on my friends list, I’d probably be able to see their birthday in their profile (along with lots of other personal information).

From there, I don’t reckon it’d be too hard to convince some people to let slip a few other personal details.

Place of birth, first pet’s name, partner’s name … before you know it, they’ve given away everything I’d need to do a bit of telephone banking on their behalf.

I’m not sure anyone has tried this yet. But I’m convinced it’s only a matter of time until something like this happens. And so far I don’t remember seeing many security warnings on the site itself.

Don’t get me wrong – Facebook seems pretty addictive, and a great way of staying in touch with your friends. But before you release any personal information on there, just take a moment to think about how many people will be able to see it.