Facebook and the risk to publish useful information for id crimes

Abstract

In the past few years identity crimes have strongly increased; however, only a few studies focused on how the same victims sometimes involuntarily spread their personal data. In this regard, social networks (and Facebook in particular) can become a huge source of information for criminals who aim at stealing/cheating identities. This article proposes an evaluation model for the risk of identity crimes that can be perpetrated employing personal information published on Facebook and made visible to anyone with an account on the social network. This model has been then employed for a study on 1000 Italian Facebook users highlighting how 9,7% of them shares a series of personal data that exposes them to ID theft/fraud and the features (age, gender, etc.) of these persons and potential victims.