Micheal’s rantings, ravings, and general banter

The “iGeneration” (I think that’s the latest ridiculous name) and even those from my generation tend to overshare. Facebook, MySpace, and others tend to be breeding grounds for poor decisions. “Let me get Facebooked” or “Let me MySpace you” are common verbs nowadays. But why am I talking about oversharing and social networking when the title is cellphones? Keep reading.

I have many rants about security, both personal and professional, and this is no different. Those who know me well know that I’m a huge proponent of security. From teaching self-defense to getting hired to break in to businesses (and I’m currently looking for new clients), I love security.

The problem? More and more people (young and old alike, sadly) are posting about their latest exploits (and I’m not talking the breaking-into-software-or-hardware-or-buildings kind). I’m talking about getting stupidly drunk (my opinion is any form of alcoholic imbibing is stupid, but that’s for another time) and posting pictures of it on the aforementioned sites. Or in this particular example, posting your phone numbers for the world to find.

If you have a Facebook account in particular and any number of friends, you’ll probably at one point or another see something along the lines of “Sue joined the group ‘Jack went swimming with his cellphone and needs numbers’.” You laugh, but it is sadly true. Visiting that group, you’ll find sometimes hundreds of gullible friendly people posting their cellphone numbers. What a gold mine!

Don’t believe me? Just search Facebook for something like this: “lost cellphone” and you’ll find a plethora of information, ripe for the picking. Hm. Do you think that vishers use this to get victims? Wouldn’t surprise me.

So in light of this, I decided to run a social experiment. I created my own “I need your number” group. Except I didn’t lose my cellphone down a storm drain (see the aformentioned search example) or break it, I just want phone numbers. Within 10 minutes of creating the group, I had 2 people join. Sadly Happily neither of them fell for it. Keep up with the fun (no account necessary to watch, just to participate) at my latest Facebook group.