When users post their birth dates and hometowns, they might not think much of it, but an identity thief sees an opening. An ex-con turned FBI security expert talked with The Guardian recently about how criminals peruse Facebook accounts to steal identities.
Lisa Raphael (left), the social media producer at Katie Couric's daytime talk show Katie, is one of our featured speakers in Mediabistro's upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an online event and workshop starting June 6, 2013. Lisa will share a case study on how the hit show uses Twitter to build interest and buzz around upcoming segments. Learn more about our our twelve event speakers and register here. 
Many Facebook users worry about their personal identities being compromised on the social network through unfortunate photos or tagged posts. But a University of Cambridge study shows that it’s possible to gain information such as political affiliation and ethnicity just from seeing Facebook users’ likes. Social security firm Secure.me also published a top 10 list of the Facebook applications that require this information when users connect to them.
Facebook hates fake profiles. The site has roughly 955 million users, and it wants to make sure that they’re all real people. Several outlets are reporting that the social network is asking users to report friends who may be hiding behind pseudonyms.
iPhones will now have Twitter for identity, but is that what developers really want?
James Dale Brown faces jail time for blackmailing a 14-year-old girl for pornography, using Facebook to contact her.
George Bronk confessed to stalking at least 172 women on Facebook, hacking into their email accounts to search for nude pictures to resend to the victim’s entire contact list.
One of the key value propositions of Facebook Connect is the ability to avoid having to remembering numerous passwords to login to sites, however the Obama administration appears to be interested in accomplishing the same thing.
In a new study published today by Gigya, Facebook was found to be the most popular third-party login service across all sites, capturing a whopping 46 percent of the market. Also somewhat surprising was that Twitter apparently captures 45% of third-party logins within media sites. What’s becoming increasingly clear is that despite Facebook’s dominance, providing a variety of third-party login services is important to capture all new visitors to a site.
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While many developers believe that opening up access to user emails may corrupt the Facebook Platform ecosystem, the company appears to be moving forward with the transition. Dan Peguine of HonestyBox forwarded us a screenshot last week of a prompt which asks the user to offer their email to the application developer (pictured below). While this is most likely an initial test, it’s clear that Facebook will soon grant developers access to user emails. If things stay on schedule, this could be the largest implementation of an OpenID-like authentication system ever.
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Over the past few years Facebook has grown from a tool for connecting with others to a tool for sharing information with others. This new model is helping Facebook to collect more relevant information about consumers and is slowly changing the advertising world forever. We are in the midst of a shift toward monitoring our digital footprints and Facebook is currently taking the lead in what appears to be a battle for our commercial identities.
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