Identity thieves are now making their way through Social media sites, targeting more innocent people than ever . There are four major way ‘s people identity ‘s are at risk to the use of social media . These risks include general information ,facial recognition ,status updates ,and internet invitations . Once these areas of information are reached peoples identities are easily accessible ,knowing this information could be vital to any persons life . This is how identity theft is made possible through social media .
The first way identity thieves are stealing others identities through social media, is simply by looking at a person ‘s general information . General information on social media sites are things such as a person ‘s name, phone number, any schools that they have attended and email addresses . Due to low privacy settings just about anyone can access this information and use it to their advantage. Within each social media site there is a search bar ,search bars allow for people to look up a name of any person who owns a social media account .Thieves can use the search bar to look up any random name such as “Jane Doe “. By searching this name hundreds of profiles can pop up with pictures allowing for anyone to click on .
Once clicked on thieves can view “jane does” profile (depending on the high or low privacy setting) ,thieves can now view general information take note and go on with what knowledge they have just obtained to stealing a person ‘s identity .According to the Better Business bureau about “30% of Facebook users did not have their profiles set to private ,compared to the 14% of people who did not know their Facebook privacy settings at all”. With this statistic the 14-30 % of people just on Facebook are now at. .in an email or private message or public post with a link to a fraudulent site. If you are already logged into a networking site and then asked to log in again, be aware that it is a red flag and it is probably a scam designed to make you divulge a lot of personal information to someone with bad intentions.
” This is perfect example of “someone with bad intentions” ( identity thieves”) inviting you to a page through internet invites, attempting to have people generate information . although social media is a great way to connect with others ,its never really known who is on the other side of the screen. this is why when it comes to using social media people should always be sure to use high privacy settings ,monitor post (picture ,and status wise) ,and never accept internet invites . using these safety precautions could help in protecting a person ‘s identity.
