Facebook fraud risk

Fraudsters can collect personal information with ease from personal profiles on Facebook – new research reveals.

BBC News 24 programme Click uncovered how applications used by fraudsters can collate name, hometown, school, interests and photographic data from Facebook users and their friends.

“Clearly the social networking websites encourage people to use their privacy settings to ensure that personal data is protected," said Neil Munroe at credit report agency Equifax.

"But this BBC investigation seems to suggest that even that isn’t enough.

"What we would say is only put the most basic of personal details on these sorts of sites. It’s just not worth the risk."

However, a survey last year by Equifax shows nearly a third of social networking sites never use the security or privacy settings.

Some 87 per cent of people on Facebook have their full name and 38 per cent their date of birth on their profile, while 27 per cent place their education history online and 26 per cent do the same with their work history, the research showed.

While none of this information in itself can be used directly by a fraudster to open an account or get access to financial products, it does give them a good advantage.

"It's terrifying how little information fraudsters need to be able to open accounts in an individual’s name, rack up huge debts and leave the victim, at best to spend hundreds of hours sorting out the problem and at worse, picking up the bill," said Neil Munroe.

"Social networkers need to think really carefully about what information they put on these sites – and they need to take sensible precautions to ensure that should someone start using their details fraudulently they will know about it, including on-going monitoring of their bank and credit information."

Daniel Barnes