Last night I gave a talk at the Northeast Ohio Information Security Forum called "Online Social Networks: 5 threats and 5 ways to use them safely". I spent the last few months doing research on various social networks specifically MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn. Many of us either use these sites or know others that do. Users of these sites have been increasing at a dramatic rate for several years. For example, MySpace was the most visited website in the US with more than 114 million global visitors in 2007, and Facebook increased its global unique visitor numbers by 270% last year alone. With this massive increase in social network usage, online social networking is now becoming the fastest growing area of privacy concerns and security threats.

My talk went over the top 5 emerging threats to online social networks and I also talked about 5 ways you can use these sites safely. You can download my presentation here. Be safe out there! :-)