Abstract
Privacy breaches and Identity Theft cases are increasing at an alarming rate. Social Networking Sites (SN's) are making it worse. Facebook (FB), Twitter and other SN's offer attackers a wide and easily accessible platform. Privacy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is extremely important due to cultural beliefs besides the other typical reasons. In this research we comprehensively cover Privacy and Identity Theft in SNs from many aspects; such as, methods of stealing, contributing factors, ways to use stolen information, examples and other aspects. A study on the local community was also conducted. In the survey, the participants were asked about privacy on SN's, SN's privacy policies, and whether they think that SN's benefits outweigh their risks. A social experiment was also conducted on FB and Twitter to show how fragile the systems are and how easy it is to gain access to private profiles. Results from the survey are scary: 43% of all the accounts are public, 76% of participants do not read the policies, and almost 60% believe that the benefits of SN's outweigh their risks. Not too far from this, the results of the experiment show that it is extremely easy to obtain information from private accounts on FB and Twitter. Keywords—social network; identity theft; fraud; privacy; fake identities
Highlights
Computer technology and the Internet have become essential necessities of modern life; they provide knowledge, communications, entertainment, and a means for sharing
We shed a light on the benefits and risks associated with Social Networks (SN)‟s. We study the local community in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to see if the benefits of SN‟s outweigh their risks and dangers
Most respondents aged between 16-20 years old (23.3%), where least respondents aged between 41-45 years old (4.7%) “Fig. 2”
Summary
Computer technology and the Internet have become essential necessities of modern life; they provide knowledge, communications, entertainment, and a means for sharing. People became so addicted to this technology to the limit that it is a challenge to stay away for a while. Perhaps the most attractive services for many are those provided by social networks. Social Networks (SN) are Internet based services that allow people to interact, express and share their ideas and thoughts in multiple formats; such as, text, images, audio, and video. When using SN‟s, different people share different amounts of their personal information. Having our personal information fully or partially exposed to the public, makes us ideal targets for different types of attacks, the worst of which could be identity theft
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