To Share or Not to Share on Social Media
by Nicole Reyes
As the U.S. continues its migration to EMV cards, this shift leaves the fraudsters needing to evolve away from counterfeiting and moving towards other, more “old school” methods such as account-takeovers and identity theft. That being said, phishing attacks, in which fraudsters obtain personal information to commit fraud, are very much alive and evolving.
Social media is and will continue to be a great pool in which fraudsters will “phish” for information. Take for example social media user Jane Doe. After Jane casually mentions her mother’s maiden name in a Facebook post, she Tweets about the traffic jam that’s keeping her from an appointment with ABC Credit Union.
Unknowingly, Jane has just given key pieces of information to a fraudster who “friended” and “followered” her weeks ago. The savvy fraudster takes these valuable nuggets of information and contacts ABC Credit Union to see how far she can get pretending to be Jane.
There are literally millions of Janes making this kind of mistake daily. The “oversharing” of seemingly meaningless minutia on social sites makes it easy for fraudsters to gain access to otherwise secure accounts and information.
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