Why you should avoid those fun social media "tell us about yourself" questions - TechRepublic

It's human nature; most of us love to talk about ourselves or at least share details about our past and preferences. And social media loves that, too, since it gets people engaged and participating.

There's just one problem, however: you might inadvertently or even deliberately give away details to strangers which might come back to haunt you, and not just with targeted ads, which are the least of our worries.

It's not just scandalous material that can do you in. Quite the contrary. The most normal (even dull) aspects of your lives might cost you in the form of identity theft, compromised accounts or stolen funds.

Case in point, the first iteration of social engineering on Facebook came in the form of would-be humorous topics like "Your celebrity stage name is your mother's maiden name plus the street you grew up on! Post the results in the comments!"

This was a blatant attempt to harvest the answers to security questions matching these details, and fortunately most people (in my circle) were too savvy to fall for this.

But the questions have gotten more sophisticated and less suspicious. I've noticed a significant uptick in Facebook questions that ask users to answer seemingly innocent questions one wouldn't think could put anyone in danger.

One question invited commenters to post how many miles they live from the place they were born. While I live an undisclosed distance from my hometown and thus posting the answer to this wouldn't necessarily identify said hometown...



Read Full Story: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-you-should-avoid-those-fun-social-media-tell-us-about-yourself-questions/

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