Posted: 10th Jul, 2009 By: MarkJ
Broadband ISP Tiscali UK has warned that, despite wanting their data to be kept private, people are freely making it available through a lack of caution in the use of social media. Tiscali's research of 2505 people found that the most common personal details we publish online are photos (68%), date of birth (49%), email addresses (40%) and 20% have even uploaded their job details.
In addition almost one in three make their social networking profile public (30%) while a further 13% don’t know the difference between a public and private profile. Also alarmingly, 5% of people publish their home address and 21% post information about holidays.
Interestingly many of those who happily share said information through social networking appear alarmed at the amount of information available about them without their knowledge or consent. Some 97% said they were not happy to have their home, housemates, mother’s maiden name and other details available for anyone to access and 78% said they are not happy to have a picture of the front and access to their home available for anyone to see.
Furthermore 94% believed that publishing this sort of information was an invasion of their privacy, 96% believe it puts them at risk of identity theft and 62% believe that aerial and streetview pictures of their home presents a security risk.
Neal McCleave, MD of Tiscali's Media Services, said:
“We think that our research is a warning to people who are not cautious about what they share and with who on social networking sites. They are sharing information they wouldn’t want to see elsewhere on the Internet and in addition, 66% admit they don’t check the terms and conditions of a social networking site and 75% don’t know who owns the rights to the personal content they share.
Over half of people (57%) have a limited or private profile and a quarter of people (27%) have ten or fewer friends while 55% have fewer than 50. We would encourage the rest to protect their profile and by all means recruit as many friends and contacts as you like, but only share sensitive personal information with people you trust. In that way you can truly relax and enjoy your social media interaction.”
The research also revealed that Facebook is by far the most popular with 70% having a profile, followed by 43% using Friends Reunited. Over half of those polled (54%) admit to logging in daily or several times a day.