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<h3>How To Give Away Your Personal Information</h3>
 
Identity Theft and Your Personal Information 
-------------------------------------------- 
Identity theft is apparently the ?in thing? these days. By 
media accounts, hackers and evildoers lurk everywhere trying 
to steal your personal information. In the past few months, 
one company after another is being forced to admit customer 
data has been lost or stolen. 
 
In many cases, they have then come forth repeatedly over the 
next few weeks, or even months revising the estimated number 
of impacted customers. To date, I don?t think any have ever 
lowered those numbers. 
 
Identity Theft and Respected Companies 
-------------------------------------- 
Generally speaking, these aren?t fly-by-night organizations. 
These are respected companies who we?ve come to trust. In 
many instances, the loss wasn?t even the work of a 
?malicious hacker? or other mystical force beyond their 
control; it was simple carelessness. The frequency of such 
reports of identity theft is making it difficult for 
consumers to feel confident in those with whom we do 
business. Customers are outraged that companies are not 
doing more to protect their information from the forces of 
evil. 
 
You and Your Personal Information 
--------------------------------- 
What about you? How are you at keeping you personal 
information under wraps? Some of these high profile 
incidents were the result of a trivial mistake that could 
have happened to anyone, including you. 
 
Let?s consider two events that didn?t make the front page of 
C|Net or CNN. 
 
The Keys To The Castle 
---------------------- 
I consult for a client who doesn?t trust me. It?s nothing 
personal, they don?t trust anyone. Whenever I visit this 
site, I am forced to contact the client throughout the visit 
to have them type a credential, or password, to grant access 
to a server or router. It?s really annoying. 
 
I really respect this client. 
 
They don?t really know me; I?m ?the consultant?. They?re 
taking the proper steps when dealing with a consultant, 
providing the absolute minimum amount of information 
required. They would never give me unsupervised access to 
the network, and certainly wouldn?t consider giving me 
passwords to their servers or routers. Not on purpose 
anyway. 
 
Then there was the day I was working alongside the client 
and needed to reconfigure a router to complete a task. It?s 
a long walk to the client?s office to get the password for 
that particular router. Yes, this is a client who apparently 
has a unique password for every piece of equipment they own. 
Conveniently the client does keep a password protected file 
on a USB key that contained the needed information. The 
client was completely appropriate and even asked permission 
before using my laptop to fetch the file. I consented, and 
even made the gesture of turning away while he unlocked the 
file and retrieved the required password. 
 
Have you ever used Google Desktop Search? It?s a very cool, 
and aptly named, program that is a Google for your PC. It 
will index your files and make them searchable through a 
fast, flexible, and easy to use interface. It?ll even cache 
the contents of files so if you move it off your hard drive, 
you?ll still be able to see the contents of what was once 
there. Normally it does all this in the background when you 
computer is sitting idle. It also does it anytime you open a 
file. 
 
Your Personal Information Is The Prize 
-------------------------------------- 
You guessed it. Logins, passwords, public and private IP 
addresses. You name it, I had it. The client who would never 
give me a single password had turned over all of them at 
once. 
 
What kind of wondrous data was now available? Personnel 
records, salary data, trade secrets? Maybe, if this was a 
corporate client. What about an academic, a University even? 
Student records, financial aid forms, and grant information. 
The possibilities were endless. 
 
I promptly deleted the cache. The customer didn?t want me to 
have the information, nor did I. 
 
Would You Hand Your Credit Card To A Stranger? 
---------------------------------------------- 
The previous example showed how simple it is to 
inadvertently reveal a large amount of data. It?s funny how 
easily a person can dismiss this type of loss. After all, 
it?s not your data, right? 
 
So let?s get a bit more personal. 
 
Convenience And Computer Security Are Rarely Compatible 
------------------------------------------------------- 
I have a good trust relationship with my next client. She is 
quite comfortable with me administering and securing the 
corporate network. When it comes to her personal credit card 
information however, well, not so much. 
 
Pretty much every web browser available these days has quite 
a few convenience features designed to make your day to day 
?net experience simpler?. One of these convenience features 
came into play in this example, specifically the Firefox 
browser?s auto-completion feature. 
 
Not too long ago, I was tasked by this client to make 
arrangements for transfer of an internet domain to their 
ownership. Not a difficult task, she could have handled it 
herself. She was quite a capable computer user; she just 
didn?t want to be bothered with the process. 
 
I set aside 20 minutes to go through her domain registrar?s 
step-by-step transfer wizard. I summoned the client to 
explain the details of the transfer displayed on my laptop 
screen. Facing the payment options screen the client asked 
if she could proceed. I relinquished control of my laptop 
and she entered the credit card information required to 
complete the transaction. 
 
Web Browsers Cache Your Personal Information 
-------------------------------------------- 
Most modern web browsers, for convenience, will cache 
information entered into web forms. The intent is to be able 
to recall this information if it?s requested by another 
form. The following day, I was in the process of registering 
another domain with the same registrar and was surprised, 
for half a second, when the payment screen pre-populated 
using the same information used the day before. In addition 
to the credit card information I also had my client?s 
personal home address, and telephone number. This was quite 
a bit of personal information the client never had any 
intention of giving me. 
 
So What's Your Point? 
--------------------- 
These two examples are very different but do share two 
important attributes. First, data the client intended to 
keep private was revealed to me. Second, the reason for the 
?compromise? of the data was due to the ?victim? working 
with said data on a computer they neither owned nor were 
familiar with. Under different circumstances, the end 
results could have been quite devastating. 
 
Conclusion 
---------- 
When using a computer system you do not own, perhaps at a 
kiosk, or Internet Caf?, be aware that the computer itself 
is going to remember a lot of what you?ve done as part of 
basic functionality. Additionally, most entities that are 
going to provide you with access to a computer, including 
your employer, probably have systems in place that could 
collect additional data you don?t desire to share. Even 
WiFi hotspots that allow you to use your own notebook or PDA 
to surf the web while sipping coffee can be a potential 
information collector. 
The moral of the story is, when dealing with computer 
systems that aren?t your own, never handle data or documents 
that you wouldn?t want left behind unprotected. In all odds, 
once you walk away from that computer, you?ve done just 
that. 
 
 
 
Author Info
 
Erich currently specializes in providing network and security 
solutions for small to medium businesses that frequently have 
to resolve the conflict of need versus budget. 
Erich is a
staff writer for www.defendingthenet.com and several other
e-zines.
 
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