June 23, 2009
By Mike Wayman
Identity theft is much easier than it used to be with the advent of web 2.0. Almost everyone nowadays has a myspace, facebook or twitter account. On each of these accounts people like to post as much as they can about themselves, their friends and their families.
The biggest problem with social networking sites is that a great deal of information that may not seem financially personal can be used against you to gain more personal information. For example, you may indicate that a hardship in your life is occurring on one of these sites. The personal information about this hardship can be used by a “friend” within the social network to begin a phishing expedition designed to ultimately get to what they need from you: your data needed to apply for credit.
The best way to avoid this problem is simply to make all of your information private on these sites, diligently review your friend requests and treat everyone like a potential threat to your security if they ask you questions of a personal nature that may borderline on asking for information about your credit, your credit history or your financial profile.
There are far more complex schemes regarding phishing for credit data on the internet and many of them are easily avoidable. Always log out of your service. Never stay logged in. Don’t keep your passwords on a file on your computer. write them down and keep them somewhere safe. Web 2.0 is excellent but it does present dangers to your financial identity.
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Pretty cool post. I just came by your blog and wanted to say
that I have really liked reading your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
Thanks for the comment. We are working hard to draft quality posts here that are relevant and of interest. Keep coming back!
Loved your latest post, by the way.