If you or someone you know is a user of Facebook or any of the other social networking sites you should take a look at the public profile and see what it is telling thieves about the user’s personal information.

Apparently journalists from the BBC1 consumer show Watchdog, have been able to prove that by only using information on a Facebook profile a bank account has been opened and credit applied for.

Simply using the information from the user’s online profile, date of birth and hometown, enough other information was able to be harvested on other publicly available sites to assemble enough information to do financial damage.

Credit fraud is a serious situation because it can damage your credit, which leads to the higher cost or exclusion from borrowing, and can take years to clean up. A bad credit report can also impact your ability to get some jobs and security clearances.

This same warning would apply to users of others sites like MySpace, Bebo and others where personal information is displayed.

Credit bureau experts from Equifax advise that at the very least you should avoid putting your full date of birth on the site as well as the names of children, pets and especially your mother’s maiden name.

Don’t worry, people will still love you even if you tell them you live in a neighboring town to fool the scammers.