Cyberclinic: My daughter has put her details online. Should I worry?

By Rhodri Marsden

It's relentlessly drilled into us to be careful when using credit cards on the internet. But a recent survey by the security experts Symantec showed that one in 10 people are comparatively cavalier when it comes to revealing other kinds of personal information on blogs and social networking profiles. I'm as bad as anyone; although I'm not stupid enough to reveal my mother's maiden name on a daily basis, I do allow sites to tease personal information out of me and put this information on display to the world – such as my birthday. And I'm not alone.

"It didn't occur to me until I read this week's question," emailed John Freeman, "that my complete schooling history features on at least two popular websites."

Parents seem to be primarily concerned that this information leak might lead their offspring to become victims of stalking. In truth, the younger generation are far better at concealing their identities while online than their parents are. But surveys show that around 2 per cent of us have, nevertheless, experienced some kind of online harassment, with 7 per cent of those cases having spilled over into the real world.

The impact of this is hard to measure; even though these stalkers are unlikely to end up loitering outside your flat, it can be distressing. " Ever since I had a bombardment of unpleasant emails a couple of years ago," writes Clare S, "I've been much more careful with MySpace profiles and so on – particularly with photos. And if you have a choice of whether or not to reveal certain information, I'd advise just to click on 'no'."

From swivel-eyed stalkers to identity fraudsters: they can use similar information to obtain store cards, personal loans and even mortgages in our names. And it's worth stressing that these aren't crack teams of geeks hacking their way through firewalls, they just have internet access, a bit of spare time and criminal intent.

Tom Ilube, of "identity guardians" garlik.com, explains: " Recently, from one girl's Myspace page, I was able to follow links and obtain her surname, date of birth, address and mother's maiden name – all quite legally, and within about 30 minutes. While this information can't be used to hack into an online banking account, it can still be used for fraudulent purposes." If you're worried about compromising information that may already be online, garlik.com offers a service called DataProtect which scours the internet and then offers you advice – depending on the information that it manages to unearth. But a good first step might be to forego a few "Happy Returns" wishes from complete strangers, and delete your date of birth from Facebook. Just to be on the safe side.

Diagnosis required

Next week's question comes from Steve Ealham: "There seem to be so many ways of calling landlines and mobiles abroad – phonecards, VoIP and so on – but which method works out the cheapest?" Any comments, and new questions for the Cyberclinic, should be emailed to cyberclinic@independent.co.uk

cyberclinic@independent.co.uk