Cyber criminals are smart- from curated malware and targeted attacks, security breaches happen every day. Cyber attacks have have increased more than 70% over 2013 and 47% of all US adults have had their personal data exposed by hacking attacks in the last year. With the increased volume of attacks and breaches, our biggest risk to security is ourselves.
Oversharing, while annoying in most situations, can also be an incredible security risk to accounts and could be making it easier for criminals to access information. How much of you is actually on your social media accounts? Even data that you don’t mean to share easily ends up for everyone to see, from phone information to location to even usage habits that give hackers clues into your accounts.
On average, a twitter password sells for more than credit card details on the black market. Once one account is hacked, others are very likely to follow. Personalized social engineering and spam emails that are specifically targeted to the victim are easy to overlook as malicious, especially when they contain familiar information. Extortion could follow shortly after, charging money to regain control of stolen accounts, or ransoming private conversations or photos.
In a 2015 study conducted by the USA Network, 55% of young people say that if they could start fresh, they wouldn’t join social media at all. Take a look at this infographic, produced by DigitalGuardian, for more on what oversharing could mean for your accounts and their security.
H/T: Brian Wallace, President, NowSourcing, Inc.
