Friday, April 10, 2009

Identity theft on social networks - nobody is who they say they are

Just the start - Schneier on Security: Social Networking Identity Theft Scams. It's well worth reading, not so much because of the details of the attack but because it's a marker for a new front in 21st century fraud.

I know it seems like a private obsession, but please trust me on this one. In forty years this will be seen as the golden age of fraud - enabled by new escalations in complexity powered by computation and communication technology.

I'm sure there are analogies in the history of clay tablets, papyrus, paper, printing, the telegraph and so on.

Fraud and deception are as old as biology -- in fact they may define what it means to be alive. Almost certainly deception detection and response have powered the evolution of the nervous system over the last billion years or so, and the evolution of sentience over the last few thousand years.

Interesting times.

No comments: