Backup Anytime

You may recall the facebook data breach (not the most recent one) in March. This involved users photos becoming visible to logged on user. face book resolved this issue resulting in a “now you see me, now you don’t” scenario. The global coverage of the issue seems to have been taken with a pinch of salt by users who may en masse have decided that the coverage of the breach related more to the size of facebook than it did the severity of the breach.

This may have therefore passed as a “data outage blip” had not a more recent and arguably more serious breach occurred towards the end of July. This involved the data of birth of users being visible to anyone on line until the problem was resolved.

Given that many people use a number of social networking sites, partial data breaches on an individual membership basis are very serious. Lets say for example if your facebook membership provides fraudsters with a picture of you and your date of birth (coupled with any information you willingly provide) and this relates to facebook breaches to date so remember more may come. That information may or may not be enough to make you a victim of fraud. If it is not, it will surely make you an attractive option to fraudsters as they have some personal information pertaining to you in their possible victim database.

Add to this any other breaches at other social networking sites of which you are a member and you can see the cumulative effect of “data protection blips” can be very serious indeed. As a consequence of all of this, many users are providing false personal information (partially at least) when they join social networking sites. One knock on effect of this is the inaccuracies in social networking site data bases as to the advertising focus of membership. This reduces the validity of the advertising base and therefore the value to the social networking site.

In effect, data breaches always hurt the site responsible but often innocent parties suffer with them. In this case, facebook suffer credibility problems, potential sanction, the possibility of being sued and reduced future membership data accuracy resulting in reduced advertising value.

Other social networking sites however are tarred with the same brush and despite lesser consequences will suffer because of the concern another facebook breach brings to the industry.

The end users suffer from having to amend details, provide inaccurate details, remember the inaccurate details and potential being the victim of fraud or actual identity theft.

So, facebook suffer a loss of face, your face has been unwillingly found and everyone in the industry faces the consequences.