Pierluigi Paganini May 27, 2014

CYBERPOL the International Cyber-Security Organization (ICSO)  is looking into the ID theft of personalities on social websites online that offers very little, if any protection of your identity being used by third parties.

This comes after a fake Ban Ki Moon ID profile was discovered by CYBERPOL  on LinkedIn on Sunday past.

During the examination, it was discovered that the email address that was used to open the fake Ban Ki Moon profile was already listed on the 419 scam list, and, it would have been fairly easy for LinkedIn’s fraud division, to have discovered this if they just did a simple Google on the domain name and the email address.

The question now remains, why they did not see it?  Are the regulations on privacy and information too flexible and how can this be regulated ? The profile that claimed to be the Secretary General of the UN  was traced by to Ghana and was brought to the attention of LinkedIn in the effort to fight against online crime.  It had some 27 members of LinkedIn members already linked to it, of whom,  somewhere where high government officials.

CYBERPOL’s spokesperson said, that social networks don’t screen their members and could allow the creation of many fake Identity  by theft of any personalities online.  They said that this perpetuates online fraud on a large scale and also can provide false information to their shareholders of how many real subscribers they have.

It’s  has been proposed that, corporations should be screening the identity of members before allowing it to be placed on LinkedIn , Facebook and other public profiles.   The need for a stronger regulation on social networks has never been more stringent than present, CYBERPOL stressed and seems that online ID theft has become the norm of the day.

The public  trusts the larger role players and thus the abuse of such personalities and  trends could lead to major  online crime trends.  A closer look at how easy it is to make a fake profile on any social network,  revealed that it’s so easy, that anybody who wish to make  a damaging impersonating false id by using the photo of somebody online could be done in seconds and could stay there for month before discovered.

CYBERPOL stressed that online fraudsters knows this and can use this to gain access to financial markets with legitimates means of credibility. Assume you are a CEO of a major company and somebody duplicate your ID online and now makes contact to do fraudulent business online using your hard earned integrity and identity, What implications would this hold for both your firm and your Identity ?

(Security Affairs –  ECIPS, Identity Theft)