Users of the popular social networking website Facebook were warned on Wednesday that they were putting themselves at risk of identity fraud by posting even a handful of their details online.
According to the BBC's consumer rights television programme Watchdog, set to air later on Wednesday, fraudsters could open bank accounts and receive credit cards armed simply with the information found on a user's Facebook page.
The show created a user named "Amba Friend", posted a cartoon picture of a girl in her 20s on the fictional user's Facebook profile page, and contacted 100 people at random inviting them to be her friend. Of those, 35 replied, despite knowing nothing of "Amba Friend", thereby giving programme-makers personal details shared on the networking website.
One of the people who accepted the fictional character as their friend was Scott Gould, 23, whose Facebook entry contained his date of birth and hometown, which the Watchdog team used to find other information on publicly available websites.
Armed with just those details, they were able to open an online bank account in his name, to have as many friends as possible - to the point where they'll befriend people they don't even know," a programme spokeswoman said. "The programme will show what easy prey they are for identity thieves."
It is possible for members to adjust privacy settings to protect information from fraudsters, but Watchdog said that many users fail to do so.
Facebook claims that some 200,000 people sign up to Facebook every day, and the site has more than 42 million members - it decided last month to publicly list its members' profiles on search engines such as Google and Yahoo! unless a user actively opts out of the scheme.
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