Study From Consumer Reports: 52% of Social Network Users Are Vulnerable, Are You One?

In a new report done by Consumer Reports, of the 2,000 people surveyed by the magazine, 52 percent said that they have posted personal information on social networking sites such as their address, their birth date and even information about their children.

It seems that Internet users are not heeding advice about the safety of information posted on the Web, namely social networking sites.

Internet users continue to post information, such as their street address on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. This seems like an innocent thing to do until these users go back and update their status to let users know that that are heading to the beach for the weekend. This not only tells your friends that you are headed for fun in the sun, it also tells predators to head out to your house this Friday as it will be vacant for the next few days.

The danger in posting some of this information is not just the fact that you are giving users with other motives access to your house for the weekend, some are giving child predators access to their children. When users post pictures of their children along with their names and birth dates, they are giving a predator just enough information to draw their children to them. This could prove to be a fatal mistake.

Social networking site users need to be aware that there are predators out there creating profiles to befriend them in order to do these things and worse. These predators may appear as your long lost college buddy or the guy that sat next to you in high school.

Recently, Facebook has come under fire for using a new approach for connecting their users to more people across the web by using social graphs compiled by individual sites such as Yelp or Pandora and combining them to create a larger, more social picture. While Facebook says that their users are in full control over which of their information is revealed. Congress is calling for an investigation into the security of the site.

According the report done by Consumer Reports, 1.7 million online households were victims of Web-related ID theft in the last year. This should serve as a warning that everyone online has a target on their backs.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to see if you may be at risk:  

Do you ever open emails from unknown senders?
When was the last time you scanned your computer for viruses?
Do you have a 2010 version of antivirus protection installed in your computer?
Does your computer feel bogged down or is it running slower than the day you purchased it?
Is your personal information (such as date of birth, hometown, names of family members, etc.) readily available on any of the social networking sites?

If you answered YES to any of these questions you may be at serious risk!

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George Steel - Covers internet security issues, malicious threats, computer virus threats from all around the world, and general technology breaking news for Antivirus Help Center.

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The reporter of this article does not receive any compensation from the companies mentioned in this story. George Steel is employed by Antivirus Help Center a company who brings public awareness and helps protect consumers from serious computer security issues.