Scammers are always on the lookout for a fresh victim. Readily available information that people share and post online are great starts.
It is important to learn how to protect your identity online, because what you post, and what you are sharing can easily be used against you. Scammers are always on the lookout for a fresh victim and readily available information that people share and post online are great starts. This document is going to focus on Facebook, almost all social media sites will have privacy settings that you can tailor to best protect you and your identity.
Identity Theft
Identity theft is when your image or name is stolen and used by scammers. Sometimes this could be a fake Facebook profile, or worse, they start taking out loans in your name, or even take ownership of your house. There are some real horror stories out there of innocent people losing everything because the other person has more proof of their identity than the person they stole it from!
Impersonation Scams
Impersonation scams can vary from having somebody pretend to be you on Social Media, to having somebody take out loans and mortgages using your identity. This is a very scary part of our existence now and this is becoming an all too familiar scam we hear about weekly in the news. We can limit our risks by being thoughtful about what we share online and offline that can be used against us
Choosing What We Share
Always keep important documents, like birth certificates, tax documents, legal documents, deeds etc secured. Also keep your important items like credit cards, identification and Social Insurance Numbers secure. Carry only the cards you need with you on a day to day basis, keep the others locked away. These can be reissued again to an imposter, but having the originals might help you. Never give out any important information over the phone.
A lot of us like to share our images and updates on sites like Facebook and other sites. It is only natural we want to our lives with our friends and family. Sites like Facebook are great if you are far apart from your loved ones and still want to keep in touch with them. How we have our Facebook and other sites Privacy settings configured, could be letting more than just our friends and family in on our lives, we could be handing this information over to scammers to use. Against us!
When setting up any public profile, always check the privacy settings.
Depending on when you setup your Facebook account, your privacy settings might be a little more open than you’d like. By default there are a few things you can’t hide on Facebook, and that is your profile picture and your name. Those are always public.
Choosing a Safe Profile Picture
Choose a profile picture that can’t be used against you, for example, one that cannot be used to get a new ID. Make sure it isn’t just your face, and if it is, wear sunglasses, or a hat. Ideally, show you at your best, relaxing in a chair or at the beach etc.
Time For a Privacy Checkup
First, let’s confirm that we are setup to have only our friends able to see our posts and pictures.
- Log in to Facebook
- In the top right corner, you will see your profile picture, click on it.
- Choose the menu option Settings & Privacy
- Click Privacy Check up
- Click Who Can See What You Share, then click Continue on the pop up
- For each of the items, click the arrow on the right of the item to choose what others can see.
- For most items, you have the choice between Public, Friends, Friends except…, Specific Friends, Only Me, and Custom. More most settings you want it to be Friends, not Public.
- Click Done when you have made your choice
- Click Next
- Continue through the wizard, carefully reviewing each option.
Spear Phishing
Spear Phishing is when you are specifically targeted in a phishing scam. The scammers have done their research about you, with information they have found online about you. They might know that you like to travel, like to knit or make wooden boats. They might even know that you like certain products or follow certain brands. Scammers can even discover the names of your grandchildren because your friend list is exposed to the public on Facebook. They can use this information against you very easily. They can also find out more information about your friends and relatives and impersonate them to get to you.
One of the scariest scams going around is when scammers utilize AI to be able to mimic the voice of somebody you love, see our article here about that.