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'Tis The Season For Facebook Identity Theft
During this holiday season, is it better to give or receive? For identity thieves, it's neither; they prefer to take; and their latest hunting ground for victims is Facebook. Having surpassed 800 million users worldwide, there is plenty of targets on Facebook for crooks to go after. Knowing how they go about their schemes will help you be more informed about protecting yourself on Facebook and other social media websites.
Holidays Have History Of Crime Spikes Even before the advent of social media like Facebook, the holiday season has always brought an increase in crime. People that are down on their luck sometimes resort to becoming a Grinch during the holiday season. In a desperate attempt to create a better holiday for themselves or their family, they resort to crimes such as bank robberies or shoplifting at retail stores.
Whereas banks and stores have tight security measures and insurance to protect themselves against these crimes, an individual Facebook user that shares a lot of personal information online has little protection.
Major Companies Experience Personal Data Theft Identity fraud was the number one complaint recorded by the Federal Trade Commission in 2010. It is a crime that has become an epidemic in the United States. Despite the implementation of better data security standards, news headlines like the real samples below are all too commonplace: 1)data Theft Hits 3.3 Million Borrowers at Educational Credit Management Corp; 2) Chicago Michaels Stores Reporting Data Theft; 3)CVS Latest Retailer Cited For Identity Theft Violation;
Identity Fraud Victims Exposed To Financial Losses U.S. households suffered about $13.3 billion in direct financial losses due to identity fraud in 2010. Among households with losses of at least one dollar, the average loss was $2,200 according to the Bureau of Justice statistics. Although you may have been lucky enough to avoid being affected by data breeches at big companies like the ones in the headlines above, you may be exposed to an even scarier form of identity fraud taking place much closer to home.
There are two main types of Facebook identity fraud. The type which can affect most people is when all the personal information you share on Facebook is used to perpetrate a crime.
Commons pieces of information that many of us share on our Facebook pages include our: birthday; employer name; home address; pet & children names; travel dates and itinerary.
Just like Santa has his elves help him build toys, criminal rings employ people whose job it is to hack your online accounts. If they learn that your dog's name is Rover from your Facebook account, they will take that information and try dozens of password variations. Facebook passwords are not case sensitive so it makes it even easier for crooks. In some cases, people use the same password for multiple accounts so it makes it easy for hackers to take over your other online email accounts, too.
Likewise, many people use their mobile phones to take pictures and upload them to Facebook in real time while they are traveling. This information is a clear indication to criminals that you are not home. Plus, if you share your home address on your Facebook profile, it becomes an open invitation for crooks to try to break in. Unless you have really tight security where you live, consider waiting until you get home to share information about your trip.
The second type of crime is against people who do not even have a Facebook account. Without ever knowing it, you could download a worm or virus to your computer which allows a crook to find your email address. Then they set up an account in your name and pretend they are you. If you have any pictures posted online, a crook could easily reuse one of them as your profile picture.
For example, using a fake profile, a crook could post a message to your friends that you are traveling and just got mugged leaving you with no cash and to please send money right away to you via a wire service. In addition to using Facebook, the crook could also email the same message to your entire email address book if you store that in your email service. How would your friends really know if it's real or not without speaking to you?
5 Tips To Help Prevent Facebook Identity Theft Take reasonable measures to protect your personal information. Faced with the option of being naughty or nice, some individuals unfortunately choose the wrong path.
Here are five tips to help you prevent Facebook identity theft: 1. change your passwords frequently; on all websites you use often which store personal information such as your email address and photos; 2. never click on unknown email links. It is common for people you know to get their email accounts infected with a virus, which sends out messages to their address book containing dangerous links; 3. use strong password recovery questions; weak password recovery questions are an easy way for crooks to take over email and social media accounts. Password recovery questions that may appear strong often are not when the attacker is close to you like a scorned ex spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend. 4. adjust your Facebook privacy settings; take time to read through your personal privacy settings and make adjustments to your comfort level. You can edit these setting to control who sees the information on your Facebook timeline and profile. 5. use Facebook controls on the fly; whenever you add things to your profile such as photos and wall posts, select a specific audience, or even customize your audience.
Recovering From Facebook Identity Fraud If you fall victim to identity fraud through online profile, getting the provider to help you regain control of it can be extremely difficult. Your best course of action is to shut down your online accounts. Do not even try to salvage the same account; set up a new profile with fresh credentials. Losing control over your Facebook account is worse than a lump of coal in your stocking. Take a few minutes to review what information you have available on your Facebook profile and your personal privacy settings. This small investment of your time can help prevent you from becoming the recipient of an unwanted present of identity theft this holiday season.
Author Resource:-
Nathan Randall, editor, DailyDollar Newsletter provides free daily advice on money matters plus coupons and discount codes. FYI...you can now access the DailyDollar Newsletter via iTunes podcast, YouTube video, and on Facebook and Twitter too.
Free anonymizing proxies are readily available all over the Internet. There are shows that you install on your computer to access these proxies as well as there are proxies that you can access over a webpage.
VPN services use sophisticated technologies to provide anonymity and information protection for users. They make it possible for users in foreign nations to accessibility content that might be restricted.
On home computer networks, info can easily be protected by encryption. Encryption indicates changing the data by having a scrambled strand of nonsense.
VPN services are extremely common and there are quite a couple different providers offering you various variations of them. Of course, this begs the question: Why would I even require one of these services?
VPN services provide a method to protect the privacy. The fascinating thing regarding exactly how these networks work is that the privacy security carries out additional than you may think initially.
During this holiday season, is it better to give or receive? For identity thieves, it's neither; they prefer to take; and their latest hunting ground for victims is Facebook. Having surpassed 800 million users worldwide, there is plenty of targets on Facebook for crooks to go after. Knowing how they go about their schemes will help you be more informed about protecting yourself on Facebook.
Today we hear confirmation about a breach of the Sony Playstation Network with the loss of millions of account names and personal details and potentially the loss of payment card details such as the payment card number and Expiry dates, but excluding the security code.
Why is it: whenever there is a breach of a company's security it is always attributed to the work of sophisticated cyber criminals? Is this because it really does take a sophisticated criminal to breach an environment these days or do victims prefer to characterise the cleverness of the criminal rather than the weakness of the security environment?
Transponder keys becoming more and more technically advanced. The keys provide a signal between the key and the lock By using transponder keys and locks you can help prevent auto theft.
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