A Few Good Geeks and Guys To Follow In Social Media Land

I confess. It's hard for me to read stuff about Internet threats and invasions. Some of that language sort of geeks me out. But, darn it, I'm gonna over that and start following security tweeters like Jason Lam @jasonlam_sec and Security for Dummies author Chris Boyd @paperghost. 'Cause really, folks, it's scary out there.

I read Oliver Marks’ excellent piece about trust and social media with some horror. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that celebrities get stalked online or that somebody grabs a well-known blogger’s Facebook vanity name and then tries to trade it back for some in-person face time. But who would have thought of a collection agency employee friending and stalking somebody on Facebook? If you need an anxiety fix, there's plenty to be worried about.

For example, you can find detailed instructions online for hacking into somebody's Facebook account. Yikes! For the search term "Facebook imposter," Google returns 169,000 hits, including story after story like these of people parading as somebody else. The Citizen Media Law Project reports that, in early May, Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, sued Twitter for "trademark infringement and dilution, cybersquatting, and misappropriation of name and likeness" because somebody started a Twitter page using his name.

If you really want to scare yourself, visit the Internet Storm Center. Not only does this site post "today's Internet Threat Level" and feature pieces like "Adobe Reader exploit in the wild," it has enough cyber jargon to send you to bed for a week. Not that we don't appreciate folks like Jason Lam and the bloggers at FaceTime. We do, we do. So let's start following them.

In fact, the social media-ites among us could use a much longer list of good geeks and guys to follow. Any suggestions?

- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo