Cyber criminals collect information about you from various social media platforms (such as Facebook and Twitter) and use it to create a composite profile, which they use to commit identity theft and fraud.
Watch our short video on our MyCompliance platform: Watch our short video on Social Media Profiling on our MyCompliance platform
Top tips
Do
- Do be careful what you share – especially your date of birth or any information that a bank might use to verify accounts or lost passwords. Your phone numbers, home address and pictures of your home, workplace or school are valuable material for scammers.
- Do check your privacy settings.
- Do check your app permissions. Whenever you log into another site using Facebook or add another app, you create another possible source of personal data leakage.
- Do enable login alerts when someone signs into your account from a new or unrecognised device.
- Do review your social networking sites' own online safety pages. For example:
Do not
- Do not accept contact or friend requests from people you don't know.
- Do not publish everything about yourself to the whole world. In Particular be wary about making information such as your date of birth, home address, financial information and the names of close relatives freely available.
- Do not add apps without checking what access privileges you are giving them. For example, does an app for editing images really need to view your addressbook?
- Do not use the same password or pin for all your devices.
- Do not assume that the 'default' settings on every site you use will protect your privacy.