James E-Smith reports:
IT security and data protection firm, Sophos, conducted an online study whereby they created two fictitious users: 21 year-old “Daisy Felettin” who was represented by a picture of a toy rubber duck and 56 year-old “Dinette Stonily” with a profile picture of two cats lying on a rug. Each sent out 100 friend requests to randomly chosen Facebook users in their age group.
Within two weeks, a total of 95 strangers chose to become friends with Daisy or Dinette – an even higher response rate than when Sophos first performed the experiment two years ago. Eight Facebook users befriended Dinette without even being asked.
89% of the 20-somethings and 57% of the 50-somethings who befriended Daisy and Dinette also gave away their full date-of-birth. Nearly all the others suppressed their year of birth, but this is often easy to calculate or to guess from other information given out.
Read more on MyBroadband.