It’s as certain as the sun will rise in the east: hackers are always a step ahead of the technology we use to protect ourselves. It’s a constant game of catch-up for us on the outside of the nefarious arena of personal info theft. The real rub is how easily we are exploited. Despite the shady nature of the business and those who practice it, they often harvest our most personal of info in plain sight. In fact, we often willingly hand it right on over to ‘em. Take a look at your social media postings and you’ll cringe at the number of times you have tossed out:
- Your home town
- The street on which you grew up
- The hospital where you were born
- The high school from which you graduated
- The name of your first pet
- Your favorite book
- Your favorite actor
- Your first car
- Your ancestry (maiden names, middle names, photos of your family’s immigration docs)
- The camp you attended as a kid
- Etc, etc…
But why are these so cringeworthy? Every single one of these reveals a greater snapshot of who you are, allowing criminals to more easily zoom in on you. But even more frightening is the fact that each one of these falls under the category of “most widely used security questions” for your most personal online information – your mortgage app, your insurance, your online banking, your email, your tax filings, (again) etc., etc.
So the ultimate tip is easy: don’t reveal that stuff on social media.
But here’s the real tip: your keyboard isn’t a lie detector. The easiest way to be sure that you are not sharing your personal information anywhere, is never to provide your real information in the first place. And I’m not proposing that you lie on social media. The place you can most easily protect yourself is to falsify the answers to your security questions. Use a fake maiden name. Pick an actor you hate. Select the home town you’ve always wished you lived, but never did. Enter the car you really wanted, but never had. Or take it to the next level and enter a completely nonsensical combination of letters and numbers and characters. Again, the software doesn’t care what you type, just as long as it matches when you attempt to login. Don’t ever give them what they’re looking for!
