Data Protection: Personal Data and Social Networks
- The increasing popularity of social networks now causes specialists to ponder over new security issues: any account can be compromised, even the French President’s or Mark Zuckerberg’s. The latter had his account hacked recently and an unidentified individual posted a message on his page.
- The security firm Sophos reminds the users that they must make sure that their virtual life is properly protected.
- In February 2011, BitDefender reminded social networks uses that these media are generally used to spread malware on the occasion of commercial events, such as Valentine’s Day. Additional precautions must then be envisaged.
- The increasingly significant weight of these networks on the payment market (content monetisation, dedicated currencies, escalating number of partnerships with e-commerce players, etc.) might make the user feel insecure when processing or storing his banking information on these media.
- French authorities, through the 35 investigators of the DGCCRF, also set up plans designed to warn the CNIL if an e-commerce website does not comply with the French law on information and liberty. Information about the kind of data collected on these websites will be sent to the CNIL, which will also be warned if lacks in terms of personal data protections are identified. Nevertheless, the issue of territoriality still remains and other sets of law may apply where the e-commerce website is located. The management of his identity also worries the French public authorities which currently consider dematerialising administrative procedures.
- We should also remember that any information, confidential and non confidential elements alike, posted by users and dealing with their company can, once collected and ordered, potentially affect or damage its image.
- According to a Forrester Research study, budgets allotted to IT security in the companies evolved from 8.2% in 2008 to 14% in 2010. The French information security club (Clusif) underlined that 53% of the companies used less than 6% of their IT budget to respond to security issues. As the number of Web attacks against system applications increases, one must ponder over necessary (human and financial) investments.