Social networks: A new frontier

This article is the archived version of a report that appeared in June 2009 Consumer Reports magazine.

Social-networking sites provide cybercriminals with more ways to gather personal information. Users may reveal sensitive family information simply by posting photos showing where they live or by describing a forthcoming family vacation, revelations that can help criminals.

And the number of potential victims unfamiliar with such risks continues to expand. In our survey, half of the respondents age 36 to 45 were users of a social-networking site.

It's easy for scammers to create credible fraudulent e-mail on social networks because members' listings often indicate where they live. One scheme that recently sprang up on Facebook but was removed consisted of ads offering thousands of dollars from "Obama's stimulus bill." Then there's the fact that Facebook users can pass infected software among themselves. That's risky because in our survey, almost 20 percent of online households didn't use an antivirus program.

Some sites' policies and practices can be far-reaching. Ian Tamblyn, a musician and playwright from Quebec, joined the social-networking site Reunion.com in response to an e-mail invitation from a longtime friend.

What followed was a flood of e-mail invitations from Reunion.com to the more than 900 associates listed in Tamblyn's e-mail address book, he says. Tamblyn spent days contacting them to explain. In the course of accepting the site's terms, he had unwittingly agreed to let Reunion.com access his e-mail list.

The site has since been renamed MyLife.com, but its privacy policy and procedures still make it a bit too easy to cause invitations to be sent to all of your contacts and, in some cases, to create online profiles of them, possibly without their consent. A MyLife.com representative told us that members have "complete control" over the mailing of invitations to people in their own address books.

Protect yourself

If you have minors who use social-networking sites, have them approve you as a friend so that you can monitor with whom they communicate. Be careful what you post in your own public areas, such as Facebook's "wall." For sensitive information, use only person-to-person communications.