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Social network sites like Facebook and MySpace are great places to meet people and play games. They are also a great place for thieves to mine personal information for identity theft. One of the cardinal rules on the net is to not give out your social security number unless the place is fully secure and you know the website. Social security numbers are key to several things like your driver’s license, passports, banking and school records.
If you follow some precautions, you can have a great time and still keep your identity safe.
1) Don’t click on links coming from popups. Usually, they will have a form to fill out so that you can receive something for free. But there is a slight sting attached. Sometimes these forms are applications for credit to buy things like cars, laptops, desktop computers and many more things. You only get the free item when the application goes through. Of course by then, you now have a new loan or mortgage. They will ask for your social security number and a lot of personal info.
2) The quizzes will mine information out of you. If you play several of them, they can take all info and compile it into one. Marketers are looking for such information. So are the phishers.
3) If you post your phone number, someone can backtrack to get your street address.
4) When posting a photo of you, do not have anything in the pic that can show where you live such as street addresses behind you, some type of background or tshirt that shows anything about where you live.
5) You might not want friend requests from people you do not know. They can get your information easily.
6) Don’t tell people when you are going out of town or leaving home for any length of time. If they have your address, your house could be broken into and robbed.
Protect your identity! Do not allow others access to your personal info even if you think you know someone. If you met them on the net, you do not know them. Period. Chatting for hours is not knowledge of anyone. People will say anything sitting in front of a monitor. Just protect yourself!
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6 Comments
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The part about not knowing anyone you’ve ‘met’ online is probably the most important point - a scammer or identity thief will say ANYTHING and pretend to be ANYONE in order to extract money or information from you.
Absolutely! See, I could be a nice young person who loves to blog, just got out of school or possibly is still in school. I could be fantastically beautiful and thin as a rail. Uh yeah. Well, the truth is that you have no idea who I am, what I look like or any info about me through this blog except what I choose to give. That does not make it the truth.
The fact is…you have no idea who or what I am. People should be aware of that. Teens should make certain of their emails, websites, chat rooms or whatever else. People of all ages need to be aware and do NOT give out personal info of any kind, even to someone you think you know because you don’t.
Good comments. Thank you!
I just need to get my kids to pay attention now because they don’t think twice about telling people personal details on MySpace
I know what you mean. The younger set think they are not going to get hurt by any of this. Unfortunately, too many do. Only then do they realize that what the adults were saying was correct. Somehow, we must be able to get through to those in danger, the younger people…kids, teens and young adults, all who think nothing will touch them. Where do they get this????
Thank you!
Even though they are my kids, and I love them dearly, I think it boils down to ignorance - they simply do not know what the dangers are.
Yes, ignorance is the problem. I think back to when I was that age (upper teen years) when nothing an adult could say would get through to me. I walked a very thin line between stupid and dangerous a lot of the time. And now we have a young adult in our family who will not listen to anything an adult says because they “just do not know what’s going on with them.” Sound familiar? This works for young people on the net or out in the world.
Very few of the kids, teens and young adults get the dangers. We, who are older, do know and simply cannot get through. I just wish that kids would have the respect for adults enough to listen like they do in some cultures where the adults are wise and the children are learning. But that isn’t happening. Where are we going wrong? Even though we raise the kids to listen and learn, they rebel and stop listening, believing that an adult could not possibly know what THEY are going through since it’s soooo different then when we were kids. Is it? Some but some things never change. Evil does not change.