Privacy is a very important factor for users. When browsing the Internet, our data may be compromised. There are many strategies you can use to gather information in one way or another. Without a doubt, social networks play a very important role. In this article we are going to talk about why we expose so much data when using platforms such as Facebook or Twitter and how to check if this is affecting us.
Social networks, a hole for privacy
There is no doubt that social networks are widely used today. We have a large number of options on the Internet. They serve to communicate with friends and family, express our opinion or even to inform us. There are very varied. To name some of the most popular we can include Twitter, Facebook or Instagram .
But if we talk about privacy, they are a hole. Few doubt that these types of services can be a problem for our personal information . It is common to register and expose personal data, publish information about our day-to-day life and, ultimately, put privacy online at risk.
On many occasions, all of this arises without users being aware. They make small mistakes when using these social networks and that translates into loss of privacy and data leakage problems. It is an issue that must be taken care of if we do not want problems.
What mistakes users make in social networks and expose the data
According to a report carried out in the United Kingdom by Tessian , a cybersecurity company, and based on a survey of 4,000 people, 84% of users post on social networks at least once a week and 42% every day. The problem is that in many cases they can publish information that helps a cybercriminal to guess the password or create a social engineering attack.
We are going to show some of the most common mistakes that users make on social networks. In this way, our readers will be able to know if any of these problems affects them and to be able to change their habits to improve privacy.
Make the email and similar information public
Undoubtedly a classic of the errors that users make in social networks is related to the publication of email , telephone number and other personal data of this type. This could be a major problem, as they could be exposed for anyone with bad intentions.
The goal here is not to post sensitive information of any kind. Avoid putting the e-mail address when posting or putting a comment in open groups. The same with the phone number or any other important information.
Allow anyone to access our data
It is also a mistake to make the social media profile open without restrictions. Anyone could enter and see the information we put there, the comments, who our contacts are, etc.
All of this can be used to carry out social engineering attacks. They could collect the necessary information to later send us some kind of bait and wait for us to fall into the trap to steal passwords or infect our computer.
Add bots
The network is full of bots . Basically they are computer programs created to carry out an action automatically. There are also them on social networks and they disguise themselves as contacts that pretend to be a natural person.
Their mission is generally to record personal information that they can later use to carry out a phishing attack. Therefore, we should not add suspicious profiles on social networks such as Facebook.
Put current personal information of relevance
This report alerts us to, for example, posting our new work, putting data related to the company itself and that can be used by attackers. For example, they could use them to carry out a Phishing attack in which they pose as a member of that organization requesting some type of data.
Ultimately, these are some basic mistakes that users make on the Internet. We must always protect our social networks and any profile we have. In this way we can avoid certain problems that affect us. We leave you a tutorial where we talk about social network clones and how they can damage privacy.