Social media has ignited a new level of engagement between advertisers and consumers, but can this level of oversharing leave people prone to identity thieves? Justin Schamotta, senior staff writer at Choose, explains how advertisers can avoid putting customers at risk while encouraging engagement and building loyalty.
Protecting personal information has always been as important a task for advertisers as it is for their clients and both have felt the threat from hackers eager to exploit security loopholes.
But in a digital age, the challenge has also shifted in another direction: some of the ‘bad guys’ looking to steal your precious data might be more sophisticated than ever but an increasing number are finding stealing as such unnecessary, enough personal information to commit fraud is already publically available.
Despite continued efforts, online fraud remains a serious problem and identity theft a particular concern. According to CIFAS – The UK’s Fraud Prevention Service – there were more than 102,500 cases of identify theft identified in 2010 including a 4.73% increase in the number of people falling prey to impersonation.
All in all, identity theft poses a unique challenge for advertisers using social media: how can you stop participants revealing too much? And is it even your responsibility to do so?
Social Media overshare
A recent report from Javelin Strategy & Research found that consumers using LinkedIn, Twitter, Google and Facebook were more likely to become victims of fraud than those not using social networks.
Though the survey couldn’t pin down cause and effect exactly they reported that 68% of people studied made their birthday information public, 63% shared the name of their secondary school and 18% even shared their telephone number.
Few social media campaigns would aim to elicit the public sharing of such information overtly but many of the behaviors we’d associate with a successful campaign are also a high risk for identity fraud.
For example, according to the same study Facebook users who accepted friend requests from strangers increased the likelihood that they’d become victims of fraud by 9%.
The new fraud fear
As well as risking blame from fraud victims, which aside from anything else could can damage or even fatally injure an otherwise brilliant campaign, fear of ID theft could have broader implications for online advertisers.
A recent survey carried out by ThreatMetrix and The Ponemon Institute, for example, found that 53% of consumers consider Facebook storefronts to be unsafe in terms of protecting them against fraudsters. Just under a quarter of respondents said they were unsure about Facebook’s fraud prevention measures.
A similar survey, carried out by digital marketing firm Digitas, reported that a majority of respondents weren’t ready to trust Facebook and other social media sites as buying platforms.
This is a fight those in e-commerce thought that they’d already won and, as a poster noted last week, huge challenge for F-commerce in particular.
Few people now have a problem with buying online in general but with social networks the threat to personal information seems all the more tangible.
With the rise of a more mistrusting public it becomes doubly important that marketer’s see it as their job to ensure that members of the public engaging in their campaigns don’t unwittingly become the victims of fraud.
Justin Schamotta is a senior staff writer with credit card comparison site Choose where he often contributes on credit card fraud topics.
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