Social Networking Deception Leads to ID Theft?

So, first of all, Classmates.com agrees to a proposed settlement of $9.5 million to users who complained about its false advertising – you know the email – “hey, someone’s been looking for you…and if you just upgrade from the free to the subscription membership, we’ll tell you who it is…”

And just about the time you realize you’ve been duped and no one’s looking for you, you’ve already enrolled with your credit card online…

But then you find your personal information on the site may have gone inappropriately public and there are unexplained charges on your credit cards?! Whoa.

It’s no wonder Classmates.com’s problems have now snowballed into a class action lawsuit for invasion of privacy, the above-referenced consumer settlement offer awaiting court approval, and congressional inquiries into the unexplained charges, according to a socialnetworkinglawblog.com article.

Juxtapose that with my nearly 12 year-old daughter asking today whether or not she ought to accept any of the Facebook and similar social networking type invitations to join which she receives on a daily basis. Hmmm. What so often begins as an innocent interest in connecting with friends, classmates, business colleagues, etc., can too often now digress to identity theft, fraud or criminal consequences.

Us social networkers need beware, but so do the site sponsors.

Sue B Martines, J.D.

Technology can’t prevent Identity Theft

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article (LINK HERE) explaining the problems that exist when we depend on technology to solve social problems. It is a good article and has links to some of the more famous identity theft attacks that have happened recently, including the Barrack Obama twitter hijack listed below. It even lists some of the more basic criminal tactics I have never really classified as identity theft such as

1) Impersonating parking lot attendants to collect fees
2) Impersonating garbage men to collect tips
3) Impersonating people like policemen, security guards and meter readers

The reason I bring this article up, is it reminds me of a white paper I read for my technical review as part of my preliminary exam. The paper was titled “Detecting Social Engineering” and it talked about this method which would allow a computer to analyze a phone conversation and determine if one of the two callers is not telling the truth.

The first way of doing this, comparing the information received to information in a database made sense, but the second method used “natural language processing techniques” to determine if a person is lying. This piece was the part where I felt it start to go into a fairy tale. I find it hard to believe that there is software that can take a text conversation and pick out what are lies in it. Computers don’t have the ability to “think” like humans (yet) and until they do, they can’t be expected to solve a human problem.

I believe the solution to problems such as Identity Theft or Social Engineering do not lie solely in technology or human education, but is some combination of both.

Nate Evans