AMID rising incidents of social networking crimes, the Philippine National Police (PNP) on Wednesday issued a five-point guideline to protect users of Facebook, Twitter, Friendster and other social networking sites to protect them from criminal elements.
In 2010, 72 cases related to social networking criminality were recorded, said PNP-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group Chief Supt. Samuel Pagdilao, Jr.
“Among these cyber crimes are identity theft, hacking, scamming, harassment and estafa,” he said, adding that for this year so far, 56 cases have been reported.
Pagdilao added that the Philippines is presently the fifth largest country using Facebook with 20,802,540 registered users, garnering a global audience share of 3.55 percent on the largest social network.
He warned Internet users to be always cautions of the information they ply out in social networking sites, and to scrutinize the links received in messages from persons they do not know—friends including.
“Treat links in messages on these sites as you would links in e-mail messages,” Pagdilao said.
The five-point guidelines issued by the PNP-CIDG are as follows:
• Know what you’ve posted about yourself. A common way that hackers break into financial or other accounts is by clicking the “Forgot your password?” link on the account login page;
• To break into your account, they search for the answers to your security questions, such as your birthday, hometown, high school class, or mother’s middle name. If the site allows, make up your own password questions, and don’t draw them from materials anyone can find with a quick search;
• Don’t trust that a message is really from whom it says it’s from. Hackers can break into accounts and send messages that look like they’re from your friends, but aren’t. If you suspect that a message is fraudulent, use an alternate method to contact your friend to find out. This includes invitations to join new social networks;
• To avoid giving away e-mail addresses of your friends, do not allow social networking services to scan your email address book. When you join a new social network, you might receive an offer to enter your e-mail address and password to find out if your contacts are on the network; and
• The site might use this information to send e-mail messages to everyone in your contact list or even to everyone you’ve ever sent an email message to with that email address. Social networking sites should explain that they’re going to do this, but some do not.
By William B. Depasupil, The Manila Times
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