Gone In an hour I am you

wanderer


Joined: 05/02/2009
Posts: 1653

Message Posted:
11/09/2010 12:15

That's how long it takes to find and steal your identity

teve Boggan challenged web experts to see how much they could discover about his partner. The results were chilling...

As I sit writing this, I am feeling vaguely grubby — guilty even — in the way a neurotic husband might after hiring a gumshoe to go trawling through his wife’s secrets.

There is a 15-page report in front of me chronicling virtually every aspect of my girlfriend’s life: past and present.

That includes her friends, education, embarrassing pictures, former boyfriends and long-forgotten relatives

Much of the information is new to me. And the uses to which it could be put — uses I hadn’t dreamt of until this week



Armed with this information, criminals could use her identity to commit fraud or resurrect minute details of her past, her movements and friendships to lure her into scams or even dangerous liaisons.

It could be used to con her into revealing her bank details and credit card numbers.

wanderer


Joined: 05/02/2009
Posts: 1653

Message Posted:
11/09/2010 12:17

My internet snooping began because the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt — a man not known for worrying about internet surfers’ privacy — suggested recently that young people might want to change their identities in the future in order to separate themselves from a past lived too openly on the internet.

We all know Facebook pictures of you dancing at a party with a traffic cone on your head might come back to haunt you. But change your identity completely?

Surely, I wondered, there isn’t enough out there to warrant th

So I decided to find out how much I could discover about my partner of 12 years, Suzanne, just by using the internet.

Before you think I’m a rat, I should point out that Suzanne, a 39-year-old with a soft furnishings business, agreed to it.

I began in the way lots of identity thieves do: with her name and address. Of course, I knew these details, but identity thieves often discover them by ‘dumpster diving’: looking through dustbins for a discarded piece of mail.

wanderer


Joined: 05/02/2009
Posts: 1653

Message Posted:
11/09/2010 12:18

He shared the information with Chris Sumner, 39, another security expert, who works for a multi-national corporation.

Or at least, that is Sumner’s day job; by night, he analyses vast amounts of information publicly available on the internet to see what it can tell him about criminal activity — in this case, how fraudsters are using social networking sites to choose their victims.

Using sophisticated and completely legal computer techniques, he looks for patterns in the behaviour of internet users to uncover otherwise hidden links.

Suzanne's name and address were enough to uncover her past

In the case of social networking sites, he can see just how close two people, or groups of people, really are to each other.

wanderer


Joined: 05/02/2009
Posts: 1653

Message Posted:
11/09/2010 12:19

He had met neither me nor Suzanne and knew nothing of her existence until given her name and address.

A day later, his findings dropped into my email inbox.

Picking Suzanne’s life apart, he told me, had taken him just over an hour.

This is because, in common with millions of

Facebook and Friends Reunited, and has signed up to the business networking site LinkedIn and Flickr, the photo-sharing website.

By also using the genealogy website ancestry.co.uk, Sumner was able to piece together the names of all but one of Suzanne’s relatives, including cousins.

Using electoral rolls on 192.com and by searching on Google, he found the addresses of her parents and lots of her friends and colleagues.From her LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, he found the names of Suzanne’s primary and secondary schools, and a college she had attended in Derby.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1310965/Special-Investigation-It-took-just-hour-internet-experts-private-womans-life.html

mint1955



Joined: 30/05/2007
Posts: 988

Message Posted:
11/09/2010 13:12

What can we do and how do we reverse this. Can we change things once the information is out there? How can we protect ourselves and our children more.

Sheila

bazilbrush


Joined: 29/03/2008
Posts: 404

Message Posted:
11/09/2010 13:32

Don't sign up and disclose information on facebook twitter, friends reunited etc. Big brother is watching all of us so lets not give him easy access into our lives.

erictheviking


Joined: 14/05/2010
Posts: 32

Message Posted:
11/09/2010 13:58

Well you have got to be selective with the truth. Only disclose information that is needed never any extra when signing up for things.



Always the select the opt out of receiving email marketing as this information can be sold on.



I have two email accounts one I use for official things and another which is only used on social networking sites, then information on my social networking is incorrect. IE not the correct location correct phone number....



With the name and address you have got to be careful make sure you only keep 1 up to date bank statement and shread the rest, all circular post that you receive make sure you remove your name and address before getting rid of it its a little bit of common sense really.

No1Doyen


Joined: 04/07/2008
Posts: 16617

Message Posted:
11/09/2010 14:35

It's frightening what these people can do.

steveafc


Joined: 12/12/2008
Posts: 405

Message Posted:
12/09/2010 08:46

don't shred your bank statements........burn them !