How to Protect Yourself against Identity Theft on Facebook
Facebook is known to the masses as one of the most popular social networking sites on the web. This site is avidly growing every single day and adding a plethora of new members. There are literally millions of people that are a part of Facebook and millions of more people join this networking community daily. With all these people crowded on one website, identity theft is bound to happen at one point or time.
Utilizing Facebook is a great way to market your business as well as connect with friends from the past. However, you should make it a point to not openly display confidential information about yourself on your Facebook page. You need to safeguard your page to ensure that no one can gain access to some of your private information.
The amount of information that can be gathered about someone through simply utilizing Facebook is quite shocking. There are people that list information pertaining to their birth dates, their full names and even their places of residency. In fact, there are some people that even include their full addresses and their phone numbers for people to get in contact with them.
The bits and pieces of information that are shared on Facebook are actually quiet alarming. Thieves can easily take your information pertaining to your address and put in a change of address at the post office in order to have all of your mail diverted to them. After they have gained access to your private information they can then begin receiving credit card statements and gain access to your personal social security number.
There have been some new breakthroughs for identity thieves to steal information through different means. All a thief needs now is your birth date as well as the year that you were born and the city or state where you were born. So if you have your full birthday listed on your Facebook page, delete the year immediately.
Whenever you meet new friends on Facebook it is imperative to be nice, but still keep some safety protocols in perspective as well. Set your Facebook page to be viewed only by your friends. This way you do not have to worry about random people gaining access to your personal information.
When it comes to accepting friend request from other Facebook users only accept friend requests from people that you consider a friend in your day to day activities. Reconnecting with old friends is a different scenario, however if you do not know the person sending you a friend invite, do not accept the invitation.
As long as you practice a high caliber of common sense when using social media sites, you can easily avoid becoming a victim of identity theft. You definitely wouldn’t want to write all of your personal information on the outside of your home, so why would you want to commence in this sort of activity via the internet?
7 Responses to “How to Protect Yourself against Identity Theft on Facebook”
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AMEN, brother, AMEN !!
You raise some interesting points about how scammers are evolving, unless your business, keep you address off the facebook.
Thank you for taking the time to write this, I will gladly pass this on to a few relatives, that still do not want to take facebook privacy seriously. They don’t releazise how long it takes to get your affairs in order after having your creditials stolen.
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Great Topic, so many often forget about how crafty theives are.
Really nasty humans, why do some people really feel the need to do this?
Really terrible individuals, exactly why do some people feel the need to do this?