Comments on: Social Media Data Leaks

By: RSS subscriber

RSS subscriber — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:40:06 +0000

Dear John and Greg,

So it is a user error by definition? I am not sure you can ever fix it. Education might help, but only to a limited degree.

How about a little exercise in data leakage? Do a quick search on office docs you have on your hards drive, open them up and check properties filled out for those files, you will be surprised what you see there:) Might be a separate topic altogether…

By: John Pescatore

John Pescatore — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:23:30 +0000

That is definitely a leak, due to bad judgement by the poster. Really not much different than when a user emails out a spreadsheet and forgets that one tab under the pie charts is a lot of sensitive data. Not the software’s fault completely, most bad judgement by the user – but still a dangerous leak.

With the usual caveats about surveys sponsored by security vendors who sells products that deal with the problems pointed out in the survey, Sophos just published some data on the level of attacks being aimed at social networking sites. See http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/072309-25-of-firms-suffer-social-network.html

By: RSS subscriber

RSS subscriber — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:28:41 +0000

Dear Greg,

I would not categorize this as a leak. Bad judgement on part of the poster, perhaps. The data is fed by users themselves, the mechanism of the service is designed to disseminate it and it does it well.

The TripIt plugin for LinkedIn is a perfect example. On one side it might help setup meetings and get together with past colleagues and friends, on the other hand it sends a clear signal that one is not going to be home during this time. It all depends…