Interesting: Price To Pay For Social Networking – Identity Theft

An article from: http://www.watblog.comSocial networking is a craze for everyone in the country. These days, when you meet someone new, usually the first question is, ” Are you on Facebook / Twitter?” (Orkut might be a part of the question only if your new acquaintances are unfamiliar with social networking faux pas) LinkedIn is another social networking website which may get a mention if the meeting is on a professional front. Some of us might deny it, but such websites have become an important part of our lives for the sole reason of networking; be it with friends, family, or people in your field of work. But what is the price we are paying for putting all our information on these websites? The answer to the question above is identity theft. The most recent victim was Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen. Mr. Sen is just one more in the long list of celebrities and high-profile individuals in India who have had to face identity theft on social networking websites. Another famous personality that comes to mind is film director Aditya Chopra, whose fake account was created on Facebook, and the perpetrator was luring young starlets to meet him with promises of roles in his movies. What are social networking websites doing about this? Twitter has been testing verification on a few selected accounts by asking the user to give a set of email addresses and contact numbers along with the same of others who will be able to verify your information. Once an account is verified, the account is then tagged as “Verified”. Some of the Indian personalities with a verified account include Priyanka Chopra, Genelia Dsouza, Pritish Nandy, Shashi Tharoor, and Lalit Modi, to name a few. Facebook has nothing of the sort in place, with the only security measure being a warning during sign up which tells users that the site is not responsible for the information they put up on their page (which is OF COURSE read by one and all). On LinkedIn, a member can flag an account as fake and the site will take appropriate action. Even politicians are not free from this, with former cabinet minister and BJP MP, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, becoming a victim with a fake Facebook profile created using his name. As much as social networking sites are important to us, they can cause most of us a lot of trouble. Will these websites ever be able to comes up with a foolproof plan to counter identity theft? What do you think?