Carol M Creasey.

                                          Are we Safe on Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking site used by many people. It is a good way to communicate, share stories and photographs, even keep in touch with old friends that you don’t have time to visit. It embraces all age groups from teenagers upwards and is entertaining with various games that can be played on line, just harmless fun.

Well it was until the hackers got to work. According to Neil Munro of Equifax ,apparently, hackers are now stealing people’s identity and then contacting their relatives with hard luck stories about how they need money, and  could they possibly help them.

My son and daughter are both on Facebook, and  if I ever get a hard luck story from them  via Facebook, my first instinct would be to ring them up and chat about it, or better still go and see them. I find it incredible that anyone would just hand  over money without checking, and where would they be sending it anyway?

Image by M. Keefe via Flickr

But are we to blame for giving too much information away? Some people list their full date of birth on their profile, and mobile phone number too. Fraudsters manage to dupe people all the time, and identity theft is already worrying, which is why I always shred any letter with my address at the top. Now it is on Facebook too, so we must all take care of our accounts, if we have one.