Q&A: Social networking privacy issues

Brian Honan is the founder of BH Consulting and head of Ireland's first CERT team. As a speaker at RSA Conference Europe 2009 he discussed the danger of social networks and showed how he was able to discover detailed information about a person. In this interview, he outlines the privacy issues of social networking, online anonymity and more.

In your opinion, is it possible to achieve a reasonable level of privacy while still using social networks?

Yes it is. Humans are social animals by our nature and social networks are just one other outlet for humans to interact. We should not look at social networks are threats but as opportunities for us to interact with people globally. I myself am an active user of social networks and have made many friends and business contacts online that I would otherwise not have had the same level of opportunity or interaction.  


However, unlike other human social interactions which are transient, e.g. talking to friends over lunch, the Internet keeps a permanent record of what we say to each other. If you are having an online conversation with your friend(s) then you should be aware that conversation can be seen by countless others and that a record of that conversation will be kept somewhere on the Internet. Indeed, now with some social networks introducing geolocation services a record of where we go and how long we spend there will also be maintained.  

Users obviously shouldn't share sensitive information like social security numbers, but where is the fine line between personal and safe to be published? What information do people share thinking it's safe, and then it comes back to hurt them?

People need to be aware of the environment within which they are communicating to others. If you are discussing things in a public forum then all that information is available to everyone else in that forum. Therefore hey should take a common sense approach to what they should and should not discuss. In the real world we only talk about sensitive issues when we are in private and with people we trust. I think though that when people are online they can fall into a false sense of security because there are physically in a secure place using their computer either in their office or their home which results in them divulging information they should not.

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