Sophos Australia raises privacy fears with Facebook ID probe

RESEARCH conducted by Sophos Australia has raised significant worries about privacy – highlighting how willingly social networkers give out their personal data.

Two years ago the company did a test in the UK and 43 per cent of those in the probe accepted an invitation to be friends with “Freddi Staur” – allegedly a 20-something from London, but in reality a green plastic frog. The new research conducted in Australia is more alarming given that people have had two years' worth of well-publicised warnings from a variety of agencies and Facebook itself.

Sophos Australia created two female Australian Facebook users, Daisy Feletin (21, single) and Dinette Stonily (56, married), with each sending friend requests to 100 randomly-selected contacts. Sophos waited two weeks to see who would respond.

Commenting on his blog, Paul Ducklin Sophos's Head of Technology said: “The results were even worse than in the London experiment of 2007. It seems that social networkers still haven't learned to be circumspect with their personal information.”

“Interestingly, although fewer of the 50-something crowd – 41 per cent to 46 per cent – blindly accepted our friend request, cat-loving Dinette ended up with more friends overall – 49 to 46 – thanks to eight Facebookers who volunteered to befriend Dinette of their own accord. This willingness to make friends without waiting for an invitation helps explain why the older users have more than four times as many Facebook friends on average than the youngsters.”

Sophos is warning people to be more vigilant, urging people not to blindly accept friends.

“Treat a friend as the dictionary does, namely "someone whom you know, like and trust." A friend is not merely a button you click on. You don't need, and can't realistically claim to have, 932 true friends.”

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