On Friday, a British privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office, announcede the findings of a recent survey that stressed on the risky side effects of social networking. MySpace, Facebook and Bebo are just the first three most popular social networks of the world, but there are many other web sites that seem to strive for the increased popularity that characterizes social networking.

According to the British survey’s findings it appears that young people are likely to compromise their career prospects by posting personal information on these web sites without thinking about consequences. They are also more likely to become victims of online fraud because of this habit.

Surprisingly or not, more than 70 percent of people aged 14 to 21 would not want a potential employer to read the information they posted on a social networking web site, while more than 60 percent of them do not think that this information could be “found” by the online search engines. What’s probably even more risky is that young Internet users accept persons they do not know to become their “virtual friends”; no less than 70 percent of young people seem not to be concerned of strangers seeing the information they posted.

The security group that conducted this survey reveals that young people’s reckless online behavior is very dangerous when it comes to social network web sites, since their personal information could be used by identity thieves. Thus, the Information Commissioner’s Office felt right to set up a web site to warn the young Britons to be very careful about the information they post on social networking web sites.