Recent studies showed that Internet users, in particular teenagers, young mothers and professionals, are more and more spending most of their time using social networking sites (e.g. Facebook). Understanding the addictive nature and the shift into this 'online life' is still a new challenge. However, if we look at this phenomenon, we notice that sharing personal information on social networking sites, opening up and laying emotions on the line with people who are unknown is not without risk. The ‘online life’ is foreseen to grow considerably within the next ten years as almost everything that people and organisations will do it will be recorded and stored in databases.

It is therefore crucial to underscore that the current environment in which we live and operate demands to make users aware of the fact that their world of virtual friendships involves a high degree of risk. We are all aware that those people that would like to break users’ online privacy are more likely to create a false profile on the sites.

To this end ENISA is committed to support initiatives to promote awareness of the risk of a world of virtual reality friendships across Europe. The new world scenario presents opportunities to engage in raising information security awareness. These occasions must be taken into account. Moreover, the Awareness Raising (AR) Community, recently lunched by ENISA, is fully engaged in further analyse the phenomena of 'life online'. We are convinced that to overcome the challenges presented by the growing ‘online life’ phenomenon, it is imperative for the AR Community to mark the beginning of a deep engagement not only with sharing but also with analysis of European information security good practices.

For more information on the AR Community and its activities, please contact us at awareness@enisa.europa.eu

Isabella Santa
Senior Expert Awareness Raising
ENISA
P.O. Box 1309
71001 Heraklion
Greece