Students who frequent popular Web sites like Facebook.com and Myspace.com need to keep in mind the risks involved, according to Philadelphia's district attorney.
DA Lynne Abraham warned students and others about the dangers of putting personal information on the Internet in a discussion about identity theft Wednesday evening in Huntsman Hall.
"Online info-sharing capabilities are so tremendous that it is virtually impossible to keep information about ourselves private," she said.
While social-networking Web sites may be useful, users run the risk of attracting online criminals by having personal information, such as addresses, phone numbers and pictures, online.
Lauren Steinfeld, Penn's chief privacy officer, also attended the lecture and stressed the need for students to be careful about putting themselves at risk.
The problem "used to be what other people said about you on the Internet," Steinfeld said. "Now, it's what you say about yourself."
Engineering graduate student Yijie Hu agreed that students need to take more precautions.
Hu, who has a Myspace account, said she has "become more and more cautious" with her Internet activity because she "doesn't want to be one of the victims" of identity theft.
On the other hand, Hu felt that Abraham did not understand the social and professional "convenience and advantages" of Web sites like Myspace and Facebook because she "deals with cases of identity theft all the time."
Abraham also discussed a variety of other ways in which people put themselves in danger of identity theft in addition to the Internet.
Quoting a well-known Capital One slogan, Abraham asked members of the audience to think about what they are carrying in their wallets. Unnecessary credit cards and identification cards, if stolen, create great risk of identity theft and should be kept at home, she said.
Abraham also noted that a common source of identity theft in recent years has been cell phones. Sixty-five percent of Americans own cell phones, which often contain valuable information, Abraham said.
"Criminals can easily get access to subscriber information if the phone is stolen," she said.
To reduce privacy related risks, Steinfeld urges students to take advantage of the new services that Penn Privacy, which handles privacy issues at the University, has provided. They include a new online directory, student consent forms for sharing grades and financial information, spam filtering and a new privacy Web site.
