Your PC is safe now, but your MySpace page is not!!

Implications: Most if not every PC user knows they need some form of malware protection and most if not all PCs ship with some form of malware protection. So our PCs are pretty safe these days. But most people who use MySpace have no idea that they need protection when on MySpace (or FaceBook or any other "social" website).

Analysis: Most if not every PC user knows they need some form of malware protection. Most if not all PCs ship with some form of malware protection. So our PCs are pretty safe these days. But most people who use MySpace have no idea that they need protection when on MySpace (or FaceBook or any "social" networking site). And to make matters worse there is very little the individual user can do about online protection other than not providing any critical information whatsoever.

But not giving any information is simply not possible: you need at least a shipping address and a credit card number to order things online. So here we go again: a long time ago we thought that PCs were a safe place to store information and then we found out about viruses. Now that we are all protected on our PC, we need to worry about ALL of our online activities.

An easy-to-use bullet-proof form of online identity will solve these problems but although a lot of companies have tried to do this not one has emerged as the clear leader. Each of the larger online merchants and players such as Yahoo and AOL have some form of digital identity technology but in most cases it only works for their own site. There is no standardization and apparently no willingness to work together in this field. Oh yes: the bullet-proof technology exists, but the easy-to-use part is still wanting.

Also the what I call  Next generation PCs (smart phone, IPhone, connected PDA, internet tablet, etc.) are making things worse: just check out the number of iPhone specific sites that all urge me to enter my information "online" so I can retrieve it at any time with my iPhone (as long as I have data service). How do I know these sites are legit? How do I know they protect my data from attacks? At least on my PC I can run my own protection, but once I put my information "online" on some website I have no control on whether or not MY information is protected.

So the article is correct: the new security frontier is online and it is there now! (Just look at the staggering number of people with a FaceBook or MySpace page).

PS: and all of this also applies to your LinkedIn profile! Are you scared yet? If not you should be.