PERSONAL DATA

There is so much information about yourself that can be found for free on the internet. Facebook and similar social media websites contain lots of data that can be seen by other people, such as your birthday, the schools you have attended, your pets, your maiden name and where you were born – many of these facts are also used as passwords or key questions for various accounts.

While we’re not recommending you state false information through social media, it’s wise to not consider sharing such data if it’s commonly used for passwords or key questions. However, this isn’t as easy as it sounds, as security experts Symantec illustrated in one of their reports concerning the way Google’s Gmail accounts were hacked using only the email address and mobile phone number of each victim. Fraudsters requested a password reset for a specific Gmail account, then, posing as Google, promptly sent a text message to the owner of the account, asking for a verification code because the account had been compromised. While this was happening, Google legitimately sent the code to the victim, who then replied to the text message from the fraudster, sending them the verification code! The fraudster could then access the email account, take all of the data required and create a new password. To make matters worse, they notified the victim of the new password, leaving them to think nothing had happened.