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A mobile phone company ad slogan, “it’s all about the network” is being taken to heart by identity thieves.

We’re not just talking about the cellular networks that allow you to send text messages, surf the web and shop from your handy mobile device; if a Los Angeles Times story is any indication, social networks are becoming prime real estate for sleazy personal information harvesters, spammers and just plain mischief-makers.

Some examples: MySpace users who didn’t know they were facilitating the spamming of friends; fake log-in pages for social sites capturing user IDs and passwords; widgets for dressing up profile pages hiding malware for stealing financial information.

Then there are the incidents that fall into the creepy category, according to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, based in San Diego.

“I’m seeing things that terrify me,” Jay Foley, ITRC’s director, tells Gadgetell. “I’ve seen something on Craigslist where a person had their address posted and a rape fantasy fulfillment was requested. Another social website I went through..somebody was posting nude photos of a woman and set up a profile page, but it wasn’t her. It was very embarrassing and disturbing.”

Foley says some of the more well-known social networks set up unnecessary hurdles for law enforcement. “They’re not that forthcoming to law enforcement when they want to know what’s going on. It’s a long process to get through to them and to get them to kick out the information.”

There is also the question of jurisdiction for the law enforcement agencies involved. “You’re not going to get the FBI involved in some of these accounts unless there’s a lot of money involved.”
While social networks offer a relatively new threat matrix for the ITRC, Foley says the mobile industry now provides one of the biggest target-rich environments for identity thieves. Like Willie Sutton, ID ripoff artists follow the money, and the technology. The ITRC was first formed in 1999, just before the advent of 3G networks; Foley now says he’s seeing advanced networks and feature-rich phones provide “whole new unexplored areas of identity theft...just remember this, with all this texting capability and email capability...unless you are looking at the person who sent you the message, you really don’t know who sent you the message.”

All these threats are keeping the ITRC busier than ever. Foley has had to add staff and office space, and for good reason. His group just released a report saying that U.S. data breaches, whether by human error or hacking, have doubled from Q1 ‘07 to Q1 of this year. There’s a chance that 8 million Americans had their personal information compromised in the first three months of 2008.

Yet Foley’s goal is to eventually find another line of work.

“It’s what I tell them at congressional hearings..if you guys plug the holes, I’ll go away quietly and gracefully.”

Read [Los Angeles Times] Visit [Identity Theft Resource Center]

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