Consumer Reports has unveiled the findings of its annual “State of the Net” report, a survey of 2,000 online U.S. households.

What did this year’s report find? Overall, more people are using social networking sites (almost double the amount from last year’s findings), but are doing so without enough thought to privacy and security (more than half of social network users share private information about themselves online, opening themselves up to a variety of online risks, like identity theft).

Here are a few of the key findings from the State of the Net 2010:

• About 25 percent of households with a Facebook account don’t use the site’s privacy controls or were not aware of them.

• 40 percent of social network users posted their full date of birth online, opening themselves up to identity theft.

• Nine percent of social network users dealt with a form of abuse within the past year – like malware, online scams, identity theft or harassment

• Americans have lost U.S. $4.5 billion over the past two years due to cyber crime.

Read one of the latest news stories on the findings or take a look at an overview of the results, straight from Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports has also published a helpful list of tips on how to protect yourself on social networking sites.