Identity theft has become a very common thing on social networking sites these days. As social networking sites like Orkut, Myspace, Facebook and Friendster are gaining popularity; revenge seekers have found a new weapon to abuse their enemies.

Identity theft has become a very common thing on social networking sites these days. As social networking sites like Orkut, Myspace, Facebook and Friendster are gaining popularity; revenge seekers have found a new weapon to abuse their enemies. Targets of such identity thefts are young girls and teens.

Anyone can create your fake profile on a social networking site using the information you share in your real profile. If you have your pictures on the website, the identity thief can morph your face on any obscene photograph and post it to your friends and also on porn sites. Not that these require some special skills, with the kind of tools available these days even a novice computer operator can abuse it to do nasty stuff. Such a thing is mostly done by people who know you and maybe want to revenge some action of yours. For example there was a guy whose proposal was turned down by his lady love. In an act of revenge, he created a fake profile of the girl on the social networking website of which both were members. He used her pictures, made obscene photographs out of them and posted them to all her contacts and portrayed her as a 'sex teacher'. Her contact number also was circulated. She started getting dirty calls everyday. She was so badly affected that she went into a depression.

It is shocking how people can use public medium to take revenge. What is more worrying is that the websites fail to stop this menace. The site managers come to know about the menace only when it is reported to them. So it might take some time before such an identity theft is caught. Till then the damage is done.

One has to be very careful about the personal details he or she puts on such sites. Here are a few tips to avert such identity thefts on social networking sites:

• Never give out personal details like telephone numbers and addresses.
• Try not to post your pictures on social networking sites. If you still want to do so, upload very low resolution images in .gif format.
• If you operate such sites from an internet café, take extreme care to check that you have logged out and you haven't saved your password on the computer there.
• Instantly delete any scraps or comments by anyone about your personal details like telephone numbers.
• If you find an identity theft of a person you know, immediately report to the website.
• Add as friends only the people whom you personally know.

An identity theft of such kind can give you a lot of mental torture and depression as it is an abuse on your image. There is nothing you can do once the identity theft is done. So it is better to act wisely in advance so that you do not face any such abuse. It depends on you how you use this wide world of the internet. So stay cautious and make maximum use of the internet without fear!