Millions of Sony PlayStation network users had their personal information stolen last month, and Facebook recently implemented facial recognition software that automatically links its users’ faces to photos, creating thoughts of privacy intrusion and leaving people wondering if their online information is safe.
Associate professor Marilyn Prosch, through the Privacy by Design Research Lab at the W.P. Carey School of Business, helps develop practices to keep data safe. The lab, created with the help of Prosch, has been open for about two years.
Through the research lab, Prosch helps create guidelines for businesses to help them protect personal data, a job that she said businesses aren’t doing very effectively.
“There have just been so many data breeches,” she said. “Companies are not protecting it well enough, and as a consumer, you just have to deal with it.”
Prosch said personal data can be breeched due to how an individual accesses their information also.
“On the one hand, individuals are too trusting, and secondly, they’re not thinking before they get on a wireless network and log onto their information,” she said. “You could have the safest bank in the world and then log onto their website on a public wireless network and have your information stolen.”
Ryan Kozlak, a junior nursing student, had an experience where his personal financial data was breeched online.
“I looked on my statement and I saw that there was charges made to an airline, someone bought an airline ticket,” he said. “I just cancelled my account and got the money refunded, it wasn’t a big deal, but I have no idea how they got that info.”
Although Kozlak did have his financial information taken, he said he still prefers to pay bills and bank online.
“Yeah, you’re losing a little security, but the time you save is a big trade off,” he said.
Prosch said a good rule of thumb is to use different passwords for financial and personal information than the password that is used to log in to social networking sites.
When it comes to social networking specifically, she said the way people use them can be dangerous.
When people share their status updates or locations via social networking sites, they should take the time to think about who they want to know that information, and only share it with friends, Prosch said.
Sharing info with Facebook “friends” may not be the safest option either.
“Some people will just accept friends with everybody,” Prosch said. “They have friends who are friends of friends and they don’t really know who their friends are. People need to think about who their friends are.”
Biological sciences junior Corey Seguine said that if he finds someone who wants to add him as a Facebook friend, he makes them request to be his friend.
“If they request me, I will add them as a friend and if I don’t know them I will put them in a different group so that they can’t see anything,” he said.
Kozlak said that he only adds people onto his Facebook account that he talks to on a regular basis.
“Some people have thousands and thousands of friends, and that’s really impossible,” he said.
For people who need more guidelines, Prosch said the Federal Trade Commission has useful information about data protection.
“It’s a tough topic,” she said.
Reach the reporter at katherine.torres@asu.edu
