The FBI released an alert describing how scammers can use personal information on social media to break into online accounts. As people are confined to their homes, many have been drawn to social media where they’re encouraged to share information about themselves, like their pets’ names, the types of cars they’ve owned, and their mothers’ maiden names.
While a small number of these mind numbing games are innocent, these are goldmines for criminals seeking answers to account security questions. Even if you haven’t used personal information for security questions, sharing excessive information about yourself can allow attackers to craft targeted social engineering attacks against you … Facebook and Instagram refuse to block these under their “freedom” policies … thanks Mark Z.
This is not a time to play these kiddie games!! The FBI a number of trending social media topics seem like fun games but can reveal answers to very common password retrieval security questions. The FBI encourages you to be vigilant and carefully consider the possible negative impact of sharing too much personal information online.
People like to share things about themselves online and in real life but on the internet this information is now available to anyone in the world … and you just gave them the keys!!
Even if your social media profile is only visible to people you’ve added as friends, there are many ways it could still end up on the open internet and the FBI advises users to implement multi-factor authentication on all of their accounts that offer it.
“Multi-factor authentication is required by some providers, but is optional for others,” the agency said. “If given the choice, take advantage of multi-factor authentication whenever possible, but especially when accessing your most sensitive personal data – to include your primary email account, and your financial and health records.”
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