I’m not cracking passwords, would know how to, or would want to. But last year I said 2008 would be the year of social network privacy and security. I was right, look at the proof! I’ve just decided to take the word “password” out of moderation mode, I don’t think censorship is the solution here.
     Here’s a typical scenario. A young woman tells me she’s the older sister of a child on Myspace and wants access to her sibling’s pics. She says she can no longer look over her sister’s shoulder to keep her out of trouble. I tell her she should talk to her parents if she’s concerned.

ya kinda well its hard for my parents to watch her all the time cause she lives with my mom and my mom is always travelling for her jogb and she stays with my grandma or her friends when my moms gone and when i wasnt going to college i was there to watch her but ya… i wish there was a way to just at least look at her pics…

     There’s nothing I can do but publish her story. She seems to genuinely care about her sister, as an older brother I can relate. But in cyberspace who can really verify this person is indeed an older sister with the best intentions? Short of inserting a computer chip into the brain of every man, woman and child on Earth, there’s no way to verify identity or age online. Even if we were all “dark angel” chip-tagged, Matrix-oozed and Virek-wired to the Internet, what’s to stop a hacker from bypassing identification? Back to reality people, you can’t verify identity online!

Take a look at these new stats from the BBC. UK social network stats:

• 49% of children 8-17 have an online profile
• 22% of 16+ have an online profile
• On average adults have profiles on 1.6 sites
• 63% of 8 to 17-year-olds with a profile use Bebo
• 37% of 8 to 17-year-olds with profile use MySpace
• 18% of 8 to 17-year-olds with a profile use Facebook
• 59% of 8 to 17-year-olds use social networks to make new friends
• 16% of parents do not know if their child’s profile is visible to all
• 33% of parents say they set no rules for their children’s use of social networks
• 43% of children say their parents set no rules for use of social networks

     My advice? Don’t trust anyone online! I learned this back in high school, I ran a BBS and one of my users gained my trust telling me he was a programmer with a new application I’d find useful. The amazing program he described turned out to be a custom Trojan, personalized with my name on it, and my cosysop’s name, my little brother! The Trojan tried to delete my HD, very nasty. Fortunately I was on D: and his Trojan tried to destroy C:, nothing happened to my computer. But I learned my lesson, don’t trust people online!