SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AND ONLINE ACTIVITY DO MAKE PEOPLE VISIBLE AND VULNERABLE TO DATA THEFT.

SIGNING UP

One single email id for social media, banking, applications, correspondence and everything else? You’re in the most vulnerable group of online users because now anyone on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or other app has access to your primary email id and the data you have related to it.

POSTING

Any photo you post online is Facebook’s ‘property’, and visible to the right kind of hackers even if you go back and delete it. Never post personal pictures and pictures of identity documents.

SURVEYS AND QUIZZES

You don’t need to put in your year of birth to give Facebook your age. If you use crowd sourced applications or links on Facebook for personality quizzes, you have already given them your age range, your interests and your most important friend groups.

LOGIN WITH FACEBOOK

Every app now has three sign-up or login options – Facebook, Google or other email. The minute you sign in with Facebook for easy access, everything you do on the app is now open data. This includes online shopping, booking taxi rides or even movies, and health and fitness applications.

FINANCIAL VULNERABILITY

If you save your credit/debit card details for ease of use on an app that you’ve cross-linked to Facebook, you’re vulnerable to financial fraud.

PRIVACY AND SAFETY

Love geo-tagging yourself? This could put you at risk of physical threats or robberies. In 2016, some American burglars admitted to police about using Facebook to make sure that the victims weren’t home and that they had valuables.