Personal Identity Management

Recently there was an article that discussed what I have been saying for about a year.  The article was posted at http://cusecurity.blogspot.com/2008/12/between-google-and-linkedin-identity.html.  It talks about how our culture is now set on handing our personal identities on a silver platter to criminals.  With Linkedin, facebook, personal blogs, and other things, it is very easy for criminals to gather enough personal information about us to commit fraud and identity theft.

My sister posts a family blog without security.  She directed me out to the site.  I proceeded to explain the level of detail, and individual nuggets of information she was giving out to everyone.  It startled her a bit but chalked most of it up to her security paranoid big brother.  I was able to convince her to change it to a blog that she has to authorize viewers.

There is so much information on the net about each one of us.  Companies are so proud of their executives they give entire bio’s on the website.  We have already seen many “whaling” attacks (phishing attacks directed at high net worth individuals) performed.  This will only get easier and easier as time goes on if we don’t take measures to protect our information.

Sarah Pailin was embarrassed when a college age student broke into her email.  This was simply done by using the password reset function that asked various questions that supposedly she would only know.  But how difficult it is to get the family dog’s name, the street you grew up on, your elementary school name, when much of this is posted for criminals use.

We need to cultivate more attention towards our personal information.