Britain Launches Online Safety Campaign

Britain has unveiled a new initiative to keep people safe online. Get Safe Online is intended to help and advise the many who leave themselves open toidentity theft by posting too much personal information to social networking sites or fail to secure their home wireless networks.   According to the group’s research, up to eight millionpeople haven’t bothered to protect their wireless networks, and over two and a half million have too much information posted on sites like Facebook.  The government-backed group demonstrated for the BBC how easy it was to obtain information from an unsecured network. In just 15 minutes a trained policeofficer was able to steal personal information and passwords.   "It took just 15 minutes to break into the network but it would take less than that to make the machine safe," said TonyNeate, managing director of the Get Safe Online campaign.   Last year 12% of those who went online in the UK became victims of some kind of fraud, and on average each lost $1750.