Courtesy of Florence Klein, Founder, SilverPlanet.com

Despite all the warnings, people are still posting information that’s too personal on social network sites, according to the results of the 2010 Consumer Reports State of the Net survey, which were published in the magazine’s June issue.

Two out of three online U.S. households use social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, nearly twice as many as a year ago. But more than half of all “adult users” of social networks are posting personal information that puts them at risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime. Among the findings:

• Of the adult users of social networks, 40% had posted their full birth date; 26% of Facebook users with children had posted their kids’ photos with names, potentially exposing them to predators.
• In one in four households with a Facebook account, users weren’t aware of, or didn’t choose to use, the service’s privacy controls.
• Within the past year, 9% of social network users experienced some form of abuse, such as malware infections, scams, identity theft, or harassment.
• Among all computer users, established threats, such as spyware and phishing email scams, persist at high levels, and virus infections increased significantly since last year. Forty percent of online households surveyed reported that they had at least one virus infection in the past two years.
• Overall, cybercrime is estimated to have cost American consumers $4.5 billion over the past two years and caused them to replace 2.1 million computers.

The national survey of 2,000 online households was conducted in January by the Consumer Reports National Research Center.

With social networks expanding the online opportunities for criminals, the price of cybercrime stands to grow even more. “We’re just at the beginning of seeing what the implications are for so much information being posted on social networks,” Nicole Ozer, the technology and civil liberties policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, told Consumer Reports.

Curbing crime on social networks depends on these networks continuing to improve their privacy practices and better educate users.

Consumer Reports says one way to protect yourself is to follow its “7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook” tips:

1. Stop using a weak password. Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols—insert numbers or symbols in the middle of a word—and use at least eight characters.
2. Stop leaving your full birth date in your profile. It’s a target for identity thieves.
3. Stop overlooking privacy controls. It’s easy to limit access to friends and friends of friends. Restrict access to photos, religious views, family information, and many other things. Consider leaving out your contact info since you probably don’t want anyone to have access to that information.
4. Stop posting your child’s name in a caption.
5. Stop mentioning that you’ll be away from home. Remember, you’re telling the world that your home is vacant. Talk about your trip after you get back.
6. Stop letting search engines find you. Prevent strangers from accessing your page by going to Facebook’s privacy controls and select “Only Friends” for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn’t checked.
7. Stop permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised. Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a children or teenagers on Facebook, provide oversight by becoming one of their online friends. Use your email address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities.