Surry Investigations

Continuing in the vein of my last blog entry, I’d like to share with you a story of a time I was hired by a middle-aged couple to evaluate their daughter’s online vulnerability. Their daughter, “Suzanna,” had recently created profiles on the social networking sites MySpace and Facebook.

Suzanna had made her Facebook profile private, making it inaccessible to non-friends. Her MySpace profile, however, was public. It listed such details as her cell phone number and her ‘top friends,’ a list of eight of her best friends.

I noted that one of Suzanna’s top friends, “Jenny,” had left a comment on Suzanna’s page saying that she would soon be changing her cell phone number upon switching to a new provider. I decided to take advantage of this information by sending a text message to Suzanna’s phone and pretending that I was Jenny.

By mimicking Jenny’s style of writing, I successfully convinced Suzanna that I was Jenny. We agreed to meet at the local mall to hang out and have ice cream that evening. I compiled the information I had gathered and presented it to Suzanna’s parents, who joined me when I went to meet Suzanna.

I, along with her parents, talked to Suzanna about the importance of protecting her personal information online. I demonstrated how easy it was for a potential predator to find her, and Suzanna promptly deleted her MySpace account.

This is just one of many situations in which I have been hired by parents to evaluate the security of their children online. More times than not, the child is easy to track down, meaning that he or she is open to potential predation.

Please, parents, remind your children that when creating profiles on social networking websites, less personal information is better.