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503 – Social networking: don’t put everything on show

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28 September 2010

WE are all – or at least most of us – avid users of social networking. Given how much time my daughter devotes to Facebook, I suspect it will have even greater relevance to the next generation.

But whether your network of choice is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Flikr or YouTube, social networking is about sharing common interests, letting other people know what’s going on.

But I came across an interesting piece of information – a warning – about putting too much information on social networks.

Now, I know there are plenty of horror stories of houses being trashed after a teen’s birthday party location and date was broadcast to the whole of the Facebook network, but what I’m talking about is more relevant to business owners and their cars: it’s cybercasing.

Posting pictures of you and your newest car – along with details of when you are going to be away – can be the very stuff that signposts to organised car thieves that your car is fair game. And they know exactly where it is.

It’s all thanks to automatic geotagging of photographs, which embed the longitude and latitude at which they were taken – particularly on the latest smart phone devices.

Geotagging pinpoints the location of your vehicle, which is then easy to find through Googlemaps or MultiMap.

Geotagging was brought to the world’s attention by researchers at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) who recently published a report explaining the technology and how it can be used to uncover people and possessions.

The researchers were keen not to paint a negative picture of geotagging and its benefits. They just wanted to highlight the security aspects which have not been understood by many users.

So next time you post a picture of your car – or upload personal information – it might be worth thinking more carefully about the details you are putting on show.

Because not all social networkers want to join in the same conversation.

Business Car Manager – Editor’s Blog

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Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Business Car Manager (now renamed Business Motoring). Ralph writes extensively about the car and van leasing industry as well as wider fleet and company car issues. A former editor of What Car?, Ralph is a vastly experienced writer and editor and has been writing about the automotive sector for over 35 years.

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