Here’s another entry into the whole all-you-base-are-belong-to-us, privacy fear mongering thing. This one comes to us from Experian and the folks over at London-based Abundance. It follows the tried and true approach; publicly available online information is collected from a few unsuspecting souls and given to actors who portray themselves as friends.
Combine that with the fact that people have bad memories and tend to be more open to approach while at a bar and you have the usual scenario; “Wait, what? How do I know you? Oh yea, right? How are you? Sorry, I must have forgotten.”
While it has most certainly become ridiculously easy to find out anything you want about a complete stranger online, it’s questionable whether or not tactics like this will accomplish anything. The internet, social media and cloud storage has made it addictively easy to share things that once the inside of on’e wallet, purse, photo album or junk drawer in the kitchen. Now everything is up for grabs to anyone who wishes to put in a little time and effort.
eBay just sent out a mass email asking everyone to change their passwords following some security breach. That’s just one of several recent high profile security breaches but how many people actually make the change? How many people “privatize” their social profiles? And even if they do, is the information really safe from those with hacker skills?
There’s only one true way to protect oneself online and that’s best illustrated in this 2008 Ad Council online privacy ad.
