Blog Posts by John Sileo

How do I delete my Facebook account? I get asked this question every day. At my speeches, by my clients, by my friends and family. It used to be that people no longer wanted the mundane information overload that Facebook promotes. But now they are looking at it from a privacy perspective - they no longer want their thoughts, pictures, and videos shared indiscriminately with people they don't know.

The defections have been sparked by Facebook's continuing march to sell your private information (with only your implied consent, i.e., simply by using Facebook, you agree to their terms) with an ever widening circle of people who are NOT YOUR FRIENDS (advertisers, data miners, and unfortunately, identity thieves). Many of the corporations I speak for have me include a component on safe social networking because the information their employees are posting (personally or professionally) are damaging their corporate brand and profits either through data leakage or as a beach-head for

Dishonest Employees are a serious issue and common cause for corporate data breach. In this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79XZWUh0PuE&feature=player_embedded), identity theft speaker and data theft expert John Sileo discusses several tools that will help you reduce the chances that you are hiring a data thief into your business. The Top 3 Tips for preventing the hire of dishonest employees are:

1. Ensure that reference verification procedures are not just in place, but are actually taking place. The difference between a good policy and actual application is what separates best-in-class privacy cultures from those corporations that end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as the poster child for data breach.

2. Perform comprehensive background screening in both the hiring process and after the candidate has become an employee. Believe it or not, employees do commit crimes after they have already taken a job with you. If necessary, utilize a strong

Facebook has added two new ways that you can connect to things you care about. The problem with these changes is that they take away the user's ability to control who can see these connections. The first change made is the addition of Community Pages described by Facebook:

Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. Just like official Pages for businesses, organizations, and public figures, Community Pages let you connect with others who share similar interests and experiences.

The addition of these new pages mean that certain parts of your profile, "including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests" will now be transformed into "connections," meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.

The second change that they made is More Connected

Just as you wouldn't want to give any personal identity information to someone via email, you want to use the same practices via text message. There is a new wave of fraud that tries to trick you with text messages appearing to be from your bank.

SMiShing uses cell phone text messages to deliver the "bait" which entices you to divulge your personal information. The "hook" (the method used to actually "capture" your information) in the text message may be a web site URL, like it is in phishing schemes. However, it has become more common to receive a texted phone number that connects to an automated voice response system. One version of this SMiShing message will look like this:

Notice - this is an automated message from (a local credit union), your ATM card has been suspended. To reactivate call urgent at 866-###-####.

In many cases, the SMiShing message will show that it came from "5000″ instead of displaying an actual phone number. This usually indicates the SMS message

Why do corporations care (and spend money) to educate employees about protecting personal identity? Businesses educate their employees and even their end customers on identity theft because it positively affects the corporation's bottom line (by lowering the costs of data theft). Here's how organizations benefit:

1. Minimizing employee downtime. Serious individual cases of identity theft can take up to 600 hours in recovery time. Because banks and creditors are generally open when employees are at work, the employees are forced to recover on company time. Even if they only spend 40 hours during work recovering, this is a huge cost to the company. Roughly 10% of households will have to recover from identity theft at least once this year.
2. Personal privacy leads to professional privacy. How can corporations expect employees to care about the sensitive information they handle every day (customer data, employee records, intellectual capital) if the employees don't first

Here is a crash course on how to promote information security within your company. The most effective way to build a Culture of Privacy is to break it down into 3 simple steps (most corporations skip the first step, dooming them to failure):

1. Motivate the Individual. Train yourself, your employees and executives on how to protect identity and company information first. Learning the basic principles of privacy at an individual level is a pre-requisite for all subsequent forms of data security, and supplies the necessary motivation to apply the same habits at work. Each employee needs to overcome their own apathy, ignorance and inaction before they are equipped to protect corporate assets. By making it personal, your executives and employees are acquiring the building blocks necessary to construct a corporate Culture of Privacy. Electronic information privacy training is good for their wellness, and is a means to a safer and more profitable end.

2. Empower the Team. One

Facebook safety has a direct correlation to your business's bottom line. Facebook, and social media sites in general, are in an awkward stage between infancy and adulthood - mature in some ways, helpless in others. On the darker side of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, scammers and identity thieves are drooling at the sight of this unchecked data playground. In contrast, most social networkers are myopically intoxicated with all the friendships they are creating and renewing.

There is no denying that Facebook and other social media sites have a very luring appeal. You can sit in the comfort of your own home and suddenly have a thriving social life. You can look up old friends, make new ones, build business relationships and create a profile for yourself that highlights only your talents and adventures while conveniently leaving out all your flaws and troubles. It is easy to see why Facebook has acquired over 200 million users worldwide in just over five years. Which

The New York Times recently published an article that discusses the severe changes Facebook has made to privacy settings.

What Can Google See? (Keep Your Data Off the Search Engines)

When you visit Facebook's Search Settings page, a warning message pops up. Apparently, Facebook wants to clear the air about what info is being indexed by Google. The message reads:

There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.

While that may be true to a point, the second setting listed on this Search Settings page refers to exactly what you're allowing Google to index. If the box next to "Allow" is checked, you're giving search engines the ability to access and index any information you've marked as visible by "Everyone." As you can see