What's your mother's maiden name?

Research carried out by Reed Exhibitions - organisers of next month's Infosecurity Europe event in London - showed that more than nine out of 10 people were willing to pass on information such as their mother's maiden name, date of birth and other personal details to complete strangers.

The researchers, who presented nothing to verify their own identity, claimed to be carrying out a survey into people's theatre going habits. They stopped 200 people on London high streets, saying that if they took part in the survey they would be entered into a draw for theatre ticket vouchers worth £20.

A spokesman for the Infosecurity event said that the survey was a "wake up call" highlighting "how easy it is for fraudsters to use social engineering to carry out identity theft."

After answering reasonably straightforward questions such as "what is your name?" - answered by 100% of those taking part - the researchers went on to ask a series of questions about the London theatre scene.

Stage names

Cleverly, people were asked if they knew how actors came up with their stage name. They were then told that for many actors it was a combination of their pet's name and mother's maiden name and were asked what they thought their stage name would be. Ninety four percent willingly provided this information.

To obtain the addresses and postcodes, researchers asked for their address details in order to post them the vouchers if they won - given by 98% of those taking part.

Another key piece of information, often requested by banks and other organisations to verify identity, is the name of a person's first school. Here, researchers asked the 200 people involved whether they had been involved in acting in plays at school. When asked about their first school, 96% gave the name.

Finally, the researchers claimed that in order to prove they had carried out the survey they needed a date of birth - provided by 92% of respondents. Ninety two percent also gave their home phone number in case there was a problem delivering the vouchers.

One of the research team, Claire Sellick event director for Infosecurity Europe, said: "For the past ten years we have endeavoured to highlight many of the common IT security concerns and vulnerabilities, such as information breaches via employees and consumers.

"This survey showed how easy it is to steal a person's identity and breach a company's security - security is only as good as the awareness of the people it protects."

'Disturbing' results

Last year, a study carried out by the same team revealed how 71% of London office workers were willing to reveal their computer password in exchange for a chocolate bar!

Detective Inspector, Chris Simpson, head of Scotland Yard's computer crime unit, a speaker at next month's event, said: "The results of the survey are disturbing to say the least, however they do highlight the need to raise public awareness of identity theft, what it actually means, how it can happen and the potential consequences.

"Preventing the theft of your own identity is relatively simple, but it relies on the individual taking steps to protect themselves. That is, restricting the people to whom you reveal sensitive personal data - whether in the physical or virtual context - shredding or destroying personal correspondence before disposing of it and never sharing passwords to access computer systems."

The event organisers said that all information collected by the researchers had been destroyed and that three winners had been selected at random and sent theatre ticket vouchers. Infosecurity Europe 2005 is taking place at Olympia in London between the 26 and 28 April.