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With the recent FB changes, I always thought that marketers getting your details through this method was the least of your worries - I figure identify theft is

by tobtoh 17y ago

With the recent FB changes, I always thought that marketers getting your details through this method was the least of your worries - I figure identify theft is the bigger worry!

maxklein 17y ago
Think about it rationally. There are 300 million facebook users. How many people are out there who want to steal your identity? What are the odds of those people actually stumbling upon YOUR profile? What is the damage that they will do, and how much of that damage are you going to be liable for? Worrying about identity theft is as rational as worrying about getting your eyes gouged out by crow - yes, it can happen - but fact of the matter is that it's not very likely to happen.
- tobtoh 17y ago
  I disagree ... that's the equivalent of say leaving your front door open and not worrying about being robbed because there are 300 million doors in the city. Sure you are unlikely to be targeted specifically, but once someone has decided to commit identity theft, you don't want to be the easy target. And 10 FB users or 300 million is kinda irrelevant with all the automated tools/scripts that are available these days - searching for the 1 vulnerable person out of 300 million is a relatively trivial task. They will 'stumble' upon your profile not because they randomly picked you from 300 million, but because they ran a script that identified you as an easy target.
  - maxklein 17y ago
    There are companies who make money by scaring you about identity theft. But personally, I just don't think it is a valid concern. Stealing your identity is soemthing that has always been possible, but only nowadays is there some type of hullaboo about it. I just cannot see it happening so often and being such a big problem for me to bother about it. But it's just my opinion, I don't actually know. Maybe one day when I'm being carted away for ordering a million grandma porn videos without paying, I will realise the error of my ways...
    - rapind 17y ago
      Since there's money to be made from stealing someone's identity, then the easier it gets to do it, the more often it'll happen IMO. Services like this are lowering the barrier of entry. There's a reason companies are trying to scare you about identity theft. They're in this market because they see it as a growth market. They believe identity theft will increase and they're targeting it with their services and products. I agree that some will use scare tactics to get us even more wound up over it and make some extra $, maybe because they've already over saturated the market, however I definitely think it's going to become a sizable problem.

by tobtoh 17y ago

With the recent FB changes, I always thought that marketers getting your details through this method was the least of your worries - I figure identify theft is the bigger worry!

maxklein 17y ago

Think about it rationally. There are 300 million facebook users. How many people are out there who want to steal your identity? What are the odds of those people actually stumbling upon YOUR profile? What is the damage that they will do, and how much of that damage are you going to be liable for? Worrying about identity theft is as rational as worrying about getting your eyes gouged out by crow - yes, it can happen - but fact of the matter is that it's not very likely to happen.

tobtoh 17y ago
I disagree ... that's the equivalent of say leaving your front door open and not worrying about being robbed because there are 300 million doors in the city. Sure you are unlikely to be targeted specifically, but once someone has decided to commit identity theft, you don't want to be the easy target. And 10 FB users or 300 million is kinda irrelevant with all the automated tools/scripts that are available these days - searching for the 1 vulnerable person out of 300 million is a relatively trivial task. They will 'stumble' upon your profile not because they randomly picked you from 300 million, but because they ran a script that identified you as an easy target.
- maxklein 17y ago
  There are companies who make money by scaring you about identity theft. But personally, I just don't think it is a valid concern. Stealing your identity is soemthing that has always been possible, but only nowadays is there some type of hullaboo about it. I just cannot see it happening so often and being such a big problem for me to bother about it. But it's just my opinion, I don't actually know. Maybe one day when I'm being carted away for ordering a million grandma porn videos without paying, I will realise the error of my ways...
  - rapind 17y ago
    Since there's money to be made from stealing someone's identity, then the easier it gets to do it, the more often it'll happen IMO. Services like this are lowering the barrier of entry. There's a reason companies are trying to scare you about identity theft. They're in this market because they see it as a growth market. They believe identity theft will increase and they're targeting it with their services and products. I agree that some will use scare tactics to get us even more wound up over it and make some extra $, maybe because they've already over saturated the market, however I definitely think it's going to become a sizable problem.