Following Steve Peisner’s infiltration of the Texas state database, BBC News reports that Equifax, a credit information service, is warning that users of social networking sites are heightening their risk of identity theft by putting too much personal information on their MySpace and Facebook profiles.
Via the New York Times: Despite efforts by U.S. communications companies to bring high-speed Internet to Africa, less than 4% of the continent’s population has Web access, due to infrastructure problems that require many phone and e-mail messages to be routed through Britain or the U.S.
7 Comments
Mr. Peisner didn’t “infiltrate” anything. He found public business records that are kept for the purpose of being public and are supposed to be made public. As I posted previously, these records are part of an open government and economy. They provide basic information as to who is behind a corporations and similar entities. Also included are records of who has a lien on what property, in case someone is trying to negotiate a lien on the same thing and needs to know where they would stand. There are legitimate issues about things that should be confidential, such as SSN’s, creeping into these public records, but that is not what is being said. This blog is supposed to have a higher intellectual level than most, and this should not be misrepresented.
— Ken D.Perhaps it’s not “infrastructure problems that require many phone and e-mail messages to be routed through Britain or the U.S.” Perhaps it’s intentional. It’s a lot easier to sniff and snoop when packets are coming right through your network.
— coyotesqrlless than 4% of the continent’s population has Web access
All of them Nigerians, apparently.
— egretmanyeah I’m cynical along with coyotesqrl- the NYT portrays the internet contract as a smoke screen for expanding the US co’s share in the more lucrative cell phone market- too bad Rwanda doesn’t have the will to socialize infrastructure development, ala Japan, whose bandwidth infrastructure is way ahead of ours- that to me is the moral of the story- relying on corporations to manage public infrastructure consistently fails (ask CA)
— frankendufI read that as “Use Myspace Lose Your Soul” edition.
— discordianI’ve seen something like that. The Nigerian scam needs support. I’m afrad.
.lermit
— lermitthere was an interesting and relevant thought piece following this on the BBC (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6911756.stm) that points out that using “personal information” for identification is incredibly antequated.
Instead of being worried about sharing this information in case our identity is forged, we should be putting pressure on the key businesses that rely on this to modernise their own thinking. Why should I keep my borthday secret? It is easily found I’m sure. Surely a bank that relies on such basic information is more at fault than I am or sigining up to facebook?
— robwinton