Back in the Seventies, Monty Python lampooned the Special Branch in a well-know sketch in which Inspector Harry "Snapper" Organs announces that he keeps track of the whereabouts of notorious criminal "Spiny Norman" by reading the colour supplements (in the Sunday newspapers). That is the inevitable image conjured up in my mind by a tiny item of news buried away in today's Daily Telegraph. Investigators are using Facebook to track the whereabouts of suspected war criminals in Darfur after they had been indicted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Leaving aside the comic overtones of the leader of the Janjaweed having Facebook Friends, and his profile featuring "Which Dictator are You?" along with all his favourite songs, holiday photos, humorous videos posted to his wall, etc., there is a serious side. That is, how much can anybody find out about you? The answer should worry you and explains why investigators are looking on Facebook in the first place.

The issue is identity theft. A lot of the sort of information people typically post to their on-line profiles, and it's not just on Facebook, is the sort of information that banks and other financial institutions use for security checking people who phone up to make enquiries, or give instructions about their account. If someone has obtained your bank details, for example, they can easily find out the bank's phone number, and then they only need to be able to answer a few simple security questions, such as "What is your date of birth?" and they can plunder your life savings.

Unfortunately, too many people on Facebook and others don't realise how much of their personal information is available to everyone else. You need to check what your position is in that regard. Have you said what your first school is? Have you said where you were born? Have you said what your favourite pet's name is? These and many other similar questions are exactly what banks ask when "proving" who you are. Who is allowed to see that information? My recommendation is that you should only permit friends you trust to see information such as that, and that you should be cautious about who you accept as a Facebook Friend for exactly that reason. Facebook is a social networking site, after all, but it is a balance between wanting to be found, and wanting to be able find old friends, and needing to keep certain information private. If everybody made everything private, however, it would defeat the purpose of the network and so you have to be selective.

First click on Privacy, at the top right of page, then in middle of the next page, click on Profile. This brings up a list of parameters which you can customise to your own preferences for varying levels of privacy. "My Network" means the network you have opted to join, if any. For example, I'm in "London", so anyone else in "London" can see any data I have permitted to "My Network". Obviously for a very large network like "London", that's a huge number of people and so it isn't really very private at all. Nonetheless, I do recommend you allow your network to see who your friends are, for example. You should set your "Profile" to "Friends" only, and you should be careful only to add people as "Friends" if you know them or are willing to trust them. More private information still, such as your mobile phone number or your home address, can be restricted to certain named friends that you can specify. Less private information, such as your web site, and it could be a business web site, can be open to anyone. You can find most of these under "Basic Info" and "Personal Info".

Of course, what should really happen is that banks and others should not use idiot-simple questions to "prove" your identity.
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