Social networks: Bait for cybercrime
Majority of adults give away too much personal information at sites like MySpace and FaceBook.
By Grace Wong, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The majority of adults who use of social networking sites like News Corp.'s (Charts) MySpace and FaceBook engage in dangerous behavior that exposes them to cybercrime, according to a survey released Wednesday.

About 74 percent of adults who use social networking sites have given out personal information like an e-mail address, birthday or social security number, according to a survey conducted by security software firm CA (Charts) and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA).

"Giving out a social security number, paired with a birthday and name could provide enough ammunition for criminals to hack into financial records and compromise users' personal information," Ron Texeria, executive director of NCSA, said in a statement.

Besides compromising their personal information, adults are also leaving their computers vulnerable to attacks. About 83 percent of the survey's respondents said they've downloaded files from other profiles.

And it isn't only personal computer networks at risk, as an estimated 46 percent of the respondents said they visit social networking sites when they're at work -- jeopardizing business networks.

All the major online sites like Yahoo (Charts), Google (Charts), Microsoft's (Charts) MSN and Time Warner's (Charts) AOL are aggressively pursuing social networks.

About 2,100 adults participated in the survey.


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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.