Protecting your family goes far beyond protecting your home with surveillance cameras and home alarm systems. It extends onto the internet. Do you have those friends who are prone to oversharing online? They’re the friends that share photos of their children, first paycheck, learner’s permit and even personal information like bank accounts! While these are examples of the extreme, sharing too much can make it easy for criminals to steal your information. Don’t let social media ruin your online experience!
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Know the Facts
Security hacks are going up every year. In just 2014, about one billion records were stolen! That’s an increase of about 70% over the year 2013. Sadly, about 47% of adults in the United States had their data exposed due to hacking attacks in just that year alone. Not only is hacking irritating to deal with, but it is also very expensive! In fact, companies lost about $375 to $575 billion in 2014 just by hackers alone. Besides corporate companies, consumers lost an average of $3,300 in 2013. That’s a whole lot of money!
How Much Are You Giving Away?
We don’t propose to remove yourself from the all social media platforms, but we want you to be careful! The following are information that you may be freely providing that could ultimately put your identity in harm’s way:
- Photo, name and birthday
- Phone numbers and email addresses found in contacts lists
- Physical address
- Credit Card information
- Current and history of employment
- Check-in locations
Notice how most of this information are asked when signing up with social media platforms? Even with the highest privacy settings, you could still fall victim from hackers. While you trust people who are on your friend’s list, you may never know who is taking advantage of the information that you’re providing online.
Being extra cautious about what you’re providing is important. The key here is to be careful! The following are information that you could be involuntarily giving away:
- Your phone information can show hackers the type of service provider that you use, time zone, language, and operating system.
- Your social media account can give hackers the information on how frequent you share. It may also provide them the data on your interests, likes, friends, messages, and visits to partnering websites.
- Even your GPS location can give your information like Bluetooth signal and wi-fi.