Protect your ID

SALT LAKE CITY — Your long-lost date from senior prom may not be the only one looking for you on Facebook or MySpace. Identity thieves are increasingly using social media sites to glean information that might help them harm you.

In the wrong hands, that family tree you posted on your profile and the about-you quiz can cost you. So can the birthdate and physical address next to the My Highschool Class of '79 note on your profile and the cheery reminisces about your first love, Whatshisname, experts warn.

"People feel invincible and so many put their birthdate out there, including the year," said Adam Levin, chairman and co-founder of Credit.com. "Then they give their physical address. It's very silly and provides some of the critical building blocks (of ID theft). Then there are all the online quizzes that people think are cute and innocuous.

"Like the components of a weapon, it is in and of itself harmless until you put it together and use it. Same with the silly survey questions. They can be dangerous."

Identity theft was the top consumer complaint received by the Federal Trade Commission in 2010, for the 11th year in a row, according to a report released Tuesday. Of the 1.3 million complaints received, 250,854, or 19 percent, were identity theft.

One of Utah's experts on identity theft, Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy attorney general, said he doesn't know how often social media and identity theft converge. "But it could be. I know when I speak to people, I warn them to put very little personal information on these social websites. … There's so much personal information in there — all the bits and pieces of information that ultimately gets someone to the point where they can steal an identity."

And as people learn new tricks to protect themselves, would-be scammers evolve, too. The South Florida Sun Sentinel this week wrote about hackers usurping Carolina Droze's Facebook account, then using it to ask friends for cash because of a supposed crisis. It's a new twist to an old and well-reported scam, where a caller pretends to be a friend or relative who's in jail or mugged or stranded and in dire need of money. In this case, the hacker got into her social network account, changed her e-mail address and profile so she was locked out and couldn't change it or take it down, then solicited her friends with a bogus plea for money.