Sophos has posted a blog entry about an identity theft experiment that was made by BBC.
It involves the the social networking site, Facebook. BBC set up a fake user named “Amba Friend” and they contacted 100 random people. The objective was to learn how many of those people will accept invitation from a total stranger.
They found that home addresses and dates of birth were given by some people who accepted their invitation. This can lead to identity theft.
Sophos mentioned that they made a similar experiment in August.
Source: Sophos

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A similar experiment was conducted by us back in April of this year. A similar experiment were also conducted on a dating website.
In both cases individuals provided date of birth and other sensitive personal details. In some instances (esp dating websites) it did not take too long for someone to trust us.
Facebook provided simlar findings to the BBC Watchdog report.
Julian Evans, CEO, ID Theft Protect
http://julianevans.blogspot.com/