Blog entry recovered from MySpace archive, first published Sunday April 16, 2006.
Identity fraudsters' paradise.
I know I'm more circumspect than most when it comes to revealing personal details, but my idle cruises through the environs of MySpace have left me reeling over just how readily people post normally private information about themselves. Trawl through profiles, and you'll find many a one with basic facts like full birth names, birth dates, locations, parents and such like. Add to that these bits of "harmless fun" which circulate and quiz still deeper. I saw one recently which revealed even the mother's maiden name - something normally known only to family members (commonly used for security authentication questions protecting account recovery procedures) or that of a favourite pet or first school (also common in security questions or as a password).
Obviously the quizzes are not quite so crass as to ask bluntly, but instead attempt to tease the information out with carefully masked questions amongst a whole bunch of others for gimmick names where different elements are combined to produce an alternative comedy name (you know the sort of thing "porn star name", "soap star name", and "jedi name"). Clearly most people circulate these things in good faith, without ever giving a second thought to the implications, and they can be just a little bit of social fun. Equally, however, in this environment it is impossible to guarantee how far afield this information is going to spread, or how long it is going to endure.
The public aspect of MySpace is open to anyone on the Internet to read. MySpace itself now consists of over 70 million members. The odds are that amongst all those possibilities there are a huge number of people willing to abuse the information they stumble across that's strewn about with abandon.
Footnote: Clearly, MySpace is now demised as a social network of any standing (otherwise this blog article would still be there not here), but the observations are equally accurate when applied to any of the other social networking sites which have come to prominence since the article was first written. (March 30th, 2014)
