Social Networking: Your Key to Easy Credit?

Linda Sherry, spokeswoman for consumer advocacy organization Consumer Action, accepts that social media data could help with marketing, but doubts its efficacy in risk management. "When you get outside of a personal credit report, it doesn't seem like social graphs would help anyone," says Sherry.

All of this gives way to a lot of worry about how what you make public can be used and who will see it. Jewitt says institutions using Rapleaf's social graphs have made it clear they want to use the data positively.

Still, concerns about how a company uses social media information may be justified. What you divulge can have unintended impact. "We've seen this with applicants not getting jobs and employees getting fired for their Facebook and Twitter-based escapades," says Clark, "so we shouldn't imagine this to be any different."

Consumer advocate Sherry, however, says this about personal-though-public conversations being surreptitiously gathered and distributed. "It's rotten. It's really not something they should be doing. They may be gaining information from people who are naive and not understanding how their profiles are set. It verges on privacy violation."

Jules Polonetsky, co-chair and director of Future of Privacy Forum, supports behavioral marketing but considers this is an extreme use of if it. "It's shocking to users. It goes beyond the kind of data use that people feel comfortable with." More, he says, this application of behavioral marketing risks driving legislative action. "The general use of data is the subject of hot debate in Washington. The Federal Trade Commission is examining its view of behavioral data, trying to get to the appropriate rules. The entire future of behavioral marketing use is up in the air and this could upset the apple cart."

What social network users can do
If you're not wild about the prospect of being prospected, take steps to guard your privacy. "I think it is crucial that everyone visit the privacy notices for the sites they use, read them, and change their settings to limit who can see their information," says Clark. "For example, on Facebook, you can change your privacy settings so that only your acknowledged friends can see the vast majority of your information." You can also enable "private filtering" on your browser. Do so and your activity will be entirely out of the Web profiling system.

Scott Stevenson, president and CEO of EliminateIDTheft.com has further tips:

• Don't accept invitations to your social networking site from people until you check their profiles out first.
• Be acutely aware of what you write. Don't make public anything you don't want public.
• Take an annual inventory of all your social networking sites and delete people and information that can potentially damage you in the eyes of a creditor or employer.

While Jewitt is firm that credit issuers are using your online chitchat for marketing purposes only, he agrees that consumers should be cognizant about what they expose online. Ultimately, he says, "The custodian of the information is you."

So while you have the power to opt out of chatting on social media networks entirely, don't forget that one of the beauties of social media is that it allows people and organizations to find you. Go offline or keep your settings totally classified and you reduce that valuable connection benefit.