Social networking continues to play an important part of our cultural growth, offering an accessible outlet for expression and a means to explore greater social interactions within a broader community.
These platforms allow both anonymous and open communications with the world, giving us a voice and a forum to share our thoughts publicly and privately. However, with the growing threat of identity theft and other cybercrimes, social networks also present a new set of risks.
Social networks are not inherently evil. On the contrary, most social networks –Facebook and linkedIn for example -- are conscious of both privacy and security. However, they are a community; like all communities, they have varied populations, including some who would prey on the weak.
Some of these opportunists are benign, such as the growing community of corporate marketers who have made a valiant attempt to commercialize this new medium. Some are not.
Making sure that the networks themselves are safe requires the use of various monitoring and management solutions, and a fairly competent IS staff -- nothing new here, and some of the larger providers actually have above-average security operations.
Still, keeping the end-users of social networking services safe depends on something much more difficult to control: the end-users' behavior.
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