Oversharing: How Social Media Can Compromise Your Security
Have you ever thought about the security risks of your social media posts? Most people haven’t thought about them. Why? Because their fascination with the Internet and social media networking have made them forget how easy others can use the available information to do them harm. But don’t fret; you can still change your information sharing habits to lessen the risks and consequences of overhsaring.
Social media networking has become an essential part of our lifestyle. It is used by the general public for professional networking, for job searches and to connect with family and friends. Businesses use it to market their product to large groups of targeted future customers. And the Government uses it to keep the public informed of the latest news on safety and security. At the same time, social media has introduced security risks to our lives. In particular, social media has eroded the user’s privacy making them and their family more vulnerable and exposed to cybercrime.
Users tend to share huge amounts of private information without thinking of how it could be used against them. This is most common on children and teenagers who are more prone to adopt new technologies and social media tools without considering the consequences of posting private information on their accounts profiles. This population also can be more easily lured to click on untrustworthy links that can give hackers access to their computers or to participate in email chains that ask for a lot of personal details, especially if they come from someone that they have accepted as an ‘online friend.’ Here are some examples on how oversharing information can impact your security.
Social media profiles: these tend to show information about the user’s hometown, current location and date of birth. Sharing this information might seem to be harmless but it is information commonly used by financial institutions to verify your identity, for credit card applications and for security questions in online banking. Sharing your full name and date of birth will make it easier for others to steal your identity.
Status Updates: widely used to keep friends and family aware of your location, how you are feeling and what you are doing during the day. However, this is the perfect information source for criminals that are looking for an opportunity to compromise your home. The continuous post of status updates about the places that you frequent on a daily basis, the times of the day when you are out of your home and family vacation plans can also provide behavior patterns that can be used by criminals to target your home for burglaries or you for other types of crime such as stalking.
Online ‘friends’: users hardly know many, if not most, of their online ‘friends’ who they have befriended through another friend’s contact list or a short-term interaction through a professional or social networking forum. The lack of knowledge about these so called ‘friends’ makes the users more vulnerable to be victims of cyberstalking or other crimes. Hackers, cyberbullies, cyberstalkers and online predators also live in the online world and they know how to disguise themselves very well to extract important information from their targets.
No matter how much advice is given to the general public, including our children and teenagers, about the importance of cybersecurity, people tend to overshare information online thinking they are protected by their privacy settings. With 3.2 billion people staying connected online around the world, we need to take measures to ensure our online and physical security is not compromised. Here is a video with some tips on what you should and shouldn’t do online.
Internet and social media networking are a great part of our everyday life. We rely on these to conduct business, to connect with family and friends and to keep us informed. For this reason it is important that we are smart about their use.
