Public vulnerable to ID theft

IT security firm Sophos has discovered the British public are not showing enough care in how they share their personal information.

This follows Sophos' social experiment around identity theft which marked the end of last week's National Identity Theft Prevention Week in Britain.

Security experts from Sophos took to the streets of Bristol with a video camera, tricking passers-by into revealing their personal data, resulting in some disturbing findings.

During filming, all but one person gave their full name and the vast majority shared their date of birth and e-mail address without considering they could be exposing themselves to identity theft.

In addition, the vox pop video revealed many people are unaware or do not trust organisations' ability to look after their personal data.

Sophos says the findings are worrying, as corporate data leaks risk creating long-lasting damage to business reputation in the eyes of consumers.

Brett Myroff, CEO of regional Sophos distributor, Sophos SA, says: “It is mortifying how many people were prepared to share their personal information with complete strangers, and that the awareness campaign failed to make much of an impact on the general public.”

He adds that this is just the tip of the iceberg. “Consumers, businesses and organisations all have a responsibility to constantly look after sensitive information and not let it fall into the wrong hands. Hopefully this video will warn other members of the public to be more careful in the future with their personal data."

According to Panda Security, over 10 million users worldwide have been infected with active identity theft-based malware. Based on the trend of the previous 14 months, Panda predicts the identity theft infection rate will increase by an additional 336% per month throughout 2009.

The video demonstrating how willing members of the public were to share their personal details is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUapgAMiBJA.