How to protect your identity on the Internet
Identity theft is a big business and can have dire consequences for the victims, which means we have to become ever more vigilant.
To put this in perspective, it is estimated that 1 in 15 adults become a victim of identity theft. In 2019 in the USA alone, the total cost of identity theft was put at $666 Million, and a global cost of $1.7 billion.
In order to protect your identity, and avoid becoming a victim, you need to understand what information scammers need in order to use someone’s ID. To understand this better, we have divided Personal Data into “Critical Information” and “Intimate Information”.
What is Critical Information?
Critical information is a dataset about a person that can uniquely identify them. Think of the “Security Questions” your bank may ask you to verify your ID, and you are almost there!
Personal critical information includes:
- Date of Birth
- Place of Birth
- Social Security Number/National Insurance number (NIE/DNI in Spain)
- Passport Number
- Address
- Employer
- Mother’s Maiden Name
- Grandparents Name
- Children’s names & Date of Birth
These need to be disclosed only if they are absolutely necessary, so you must avoid displaying or sharing them on Social Media, Emails, and communication with people you do not know.
What is Intimate Information?
This is the other information set that only you will know, and may be used as part of your personal security process. These not only give an insight into your past, but also your personal preferences and history:
- Name of your first school
- Your first job
- Your first car
- Your pets names
- Your nickname
- Your favourite “XYZ” (colour, food, city, music, artist, etc.)
Think of this dataset as information that is so intimate, that only you or someone very close to you should know. These are often used by banks, websites, and social media accounts to verify you in case of any security breach.
How do scammers find this data?
Other than hacking accounts such as your Facebook, Twitter, etc., scammers can also pick up information when we share the data carelessly.
For example, how many times you have seen Tweets or Facebook Posts about “What is your favourite colour?”, or “What was your first pet’s name?”, etc. Whilst the original person posting these might be perfectly innocent, and just be having a bit of fun, we must beware that the response is mostly visible to others.
We also tend to be careless about “Date of Birth”, where we make it visible on our social media accounts. It is very nice to get “Happy Birthday Messages”, but really you have just made it that much easier for someone to find out “critical information” such as your date of birth!
How to keep things secret?
We all know about using complex passwords, not using the same password on multiple accounts, and changing the password often. Unfortunately, not many people adhere to these guidelines, because they are not easy to adhere to.
However, there are other preventative actions that are much simpler to follow, including:
- Do not share or make visible your Date of Birth on your social media profiles.
- Do not share or make visible any of your “Critical Information” on the internet including social media
- Do not share your “Intimate Information” on the web, no matter how tempting or fun the post sounds! In fact, actively provide misinformation on these posts, as a means of protecting your real information.
- Be careful about what information you post, or share on social media, as they can be useful for scammers. It is not just your followers that can see these posts.
Summary
With the widespread usage of social media, it has become easier to find “critical” and “intimate” information about individuals, specially since much of it is voluntarily provided!
We must become even more careful in the information we share online, especially on social media. A well known saying from the war was “Careless talk costs lives”, and that still stands today. The nature of the enemy may have changed, but the results could still be as costly.