41% of Facebook Users Willing To Divulge Personal Info

plastick writes "In an experiment, 41% of Facebook users were willing to divulge highly personal information to a complete stranger. This according to IT security firm Sophos, which invited 200 randomly selected Facebookers to befriend a bogus Facebook user named 'Freddi Staur' (an anagram of 'ID Fraudster'). Of those queried, 87 responded to the invitation, among them 82 people whose profiles included personal information such as their email address, date of birth, address or phone number."

Comments

Again?

[Frosty Piss]

Yet ANOTHER story about how many Facebook users are not particularly interested in hiding personal information. I mean. come on! This is some sort of News Flash? Is anyone unaware that Facebook is primarily a platform for sharing personal information?

Re:Again?

[One Louder]

Apparently, it *was* a News Flash back in 2007 when this article was written.

Was it real

[slashqwerty]

"82 people whose profiles included personal information such as their email address, date of birth, address or phone number."

How much of that personal information was real and how much was made up?

Re:Was it real

[Zemran]

I always use 1-1-1980, the date that BIOS used to reset to when the battery went flat on a motherboard.

Misleading Title

[Haedrian]

"Willing to Divulge to" makes it sound like some complete stranger went on facebook and asked "Hey, give me your email address, blood type and shoe size" and got an answer.

What it really is, is that people add friends pretty randomly and openly, and many don't secure their personal information very well. In the ideal case you would have various 'grades' of friends which determine permissions but

a) Nobody would bother using it
b) Facebook doesn't particularly care about privacy.

Anyhoo, we knew all of this earlier - so non-story.

This information isn't private

[Anonymous Coward]

personal information such as their email address, date of birth, address or phone number

I also have that information on my Facebook profile. It is available for ANYONE to see, including nonfriends.

I don't have a problem here - the problem lies with any bank who would consider that information to be "secret", and would allow someone to get a loan in my name with only that information.

Highly personal?

[Bogtha]

Maybe they just don't consider things like that to be "highly personal". By default, most of that information is available by doing such mundane things as registering a domain name. I don't consider contact information to be "highly personal". Somebody younger than me who grew up with social networking is even less likely to.

I wouldn't mind giving my info to him, he's cute

[Isaac Remuant]

just look: http://www.sophos.com/images/misc/freddi_frog.jpg

Anyway, some issues:

A) Why such a small sample data? I mean, it shouldn't be hard to annoy 1000+ users instead of just 200.
B) Why aren't they talking about apps that access your information? I know you can disable them but, if you are willing to accept froggy here, I don't think you will.

The implications of the whole thing are hilarious:
Apparently, being poked by a Frog doesn't make you want to start a friendship. That could be a better title for the article.
http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2007/08/facebook.html

C) Next Survey: There's a pretty good chance that I'll waste valuable time with inconsequential Slashdot articles. But hey, It's good fun before going to sleep.

The point of Facebook

[LongearedBat]

Isn't that the whole point of Facebook? ...to divulge personal information to all one's friends, and allowing strangers to also see it in case they happen to be long lost friends.

An experiment...

[tuxrocks1]

How many slashdotters will click this link

A Better Headline

[Ltap]

"41% of Facebook Users Willing to Press a Button Without Understanding or Caring About the Consequences."

Let's just hope none of them end up in missile silos.

This article is four years old.

[Krystalo]

This article was published in August 2007.