The Risk Management Group - The A to Z of Safe Social Media

Introduction

Early in 2012 we were asked to support the efforts of UK financial services firm Legal & General in the production of their Digital Criminal 2012: Cybersafety Report . This report, which can be downloaded here , focused on consumer risks arising from poor social media habits. The results of the survey were alarming: • 91% of the Facebook users surveyed had received friend requests from strangers • 51% of those users admitted having accepted such requests • 56% of users also discuss evening and holiday plans ‘ wall-to-wall’ Our own tests, using a network of fake Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, demonstrated that many of our fake profiles were able to gather up to 150 friends within a few weeks. One fake profile amassed a staggering 79 friends in under 12 hours, simply by using a pretty picture. Many of these new ‘friends’ were willing to share personal data with our fake personas. The risks for business and consumers arising from poor social media habits are very real, with fraud, identity theft and the exposure of corporate data being only the tip of the iceberg. The second in our series of free A-to-Z Guides is designed to raise awareness and to suggest commonsense security measures for social media activities carried out by the average person in the home and at places of work.

Mark Johnson

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Produced by The Risk Management Group 2012

Copyright Mark Johnson & Corinne Blandin, 2012