Posts Tagged ‘Mother’s Day’

How Mother’s Day Facebook celebrations can lead to identity theft

Published by pratyushkp on May 9th, 2011 - in Social, Technology
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

A couple of weeks ago Sophos explained why you shouldn’t reveal your Royal Wedding guest name. Now Sophos have to warn you that celebrating Mother’s Day can lead to you giving away too much personal information about your children.

Here’s a message which has been passed around on Facebook for a few days:

In honor of Mother's Day...If you are a proud mother re post with the name, birth date, & birth weight of your child/children!

Mother's Day post on Facebook

See what they’ve done? They’ve told me the name of their children and their precise date of birth. And I’m not even friends with them, they’ve left their profiles open for the entire world to see because they haven’t followed best practice guidelines for Facebook privacy settings.

And – don’t forget – when you share a piece of information with everyone on Facebook, that actually means the entire internet for ever. This information by itself may not be enough to commit identity theft against your child, but it’s a stepping stone for fraudsters which can help them.

You shouldn’t post this kind of personal information onto the internet – tell people you love your children and are proud of them without revealing their full names or dates of birth.

If you use Facebook and want to learn more about threats, you should join the Sophos Facebook page where we have a thriving community of over 80,000 people.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

  • What Would TV Do? Mother’s Day Edition (buddytv.com)
  • ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ From Child Fund International (huffingtonpost.com)
  • My Mother’s Day (caregiving.com)
  • PHOTOS: New Celeb Moms Celebrating Their First Mother’s Day (huffingtonpost.com)
  • Happy Mother’s Day from Mama Raider to All Raiders’ Mothers (bleacherreport.com)
  • Happy Mother’s Day (ncbookbunch.wordpress.com)
  • Happy Mother’s Day to Our Favorite Fit Celebrity Moms! (fitsugar.com)
  • Identity Theft (pastoralyn.wordpress.com)
  • Epic Meal of the (Mother’s) Day (thedailywh.at)
  • How Mother’s Day Facebook celebrations can lead to identity theft (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
Tags: Birth mass, , Child, , Identity theft, , , Royal Wedding

Hours spent on Twitter? Don’t click on scam spreading virally on Twitter

Published by pratyushkp on May 9th, 2011 - in Social, Technology
Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

Another rogue application is spreading between unsuspecting Twitter users, claiming to tell you how many hours you have spent on on the network.

The messages all look pretty similar, and use a currently trending topic such as Richard Dawkins, Cheryl Cole landing the job of a judge on the US edition of “X Factor”, or it being Mother’s Day in the United States.

Twitter scam

Richard Dawkins --> I have spent: 23.8 hours on Twitter! See how much you have: [LINK]

#zabecca --> I have spent: 20.9 hours on Twitter! See how much you have: [LINK]

Vidal Sassoon --> I have spent: 33.4 hours on Twitter! See how much you have: [LINK]

#5factsaboutmymom --> I have spent: 33.4 hours on Twitter! See how much you have: [LINK]

Even though you may have seen one of your friends tweet out a message like this, you definitely shouldn’t click on the link. It will take you to a rogue third-party application which asks your permission to connect with your Twitter profile.

Twitter scam

If you do authorise the app it will be able to post messages to Twitter in your name, see who you follow on Twitter, grab your Twitter name and avatar, and update your profile. Now, why on earth would you want to give a complete stranger the ability to do that?

Unfortunately, you may be so desperate to find out how many hours they have spent on Twitter (after all, your friends appear to have already been though the process) that you will authorise the application.

Whereupon, the rogue application will tweet the offending message from your Twitter account. When I went through the process on a test Twitter account I run, I found that it tweeted out the message more than a dozen times in less than 30 seconds.

Twitter scam

You may not realise that this is happening, however, as the app is distracting you with a message saying it is processing your results. After some whirring away, it asks you to enter your email address to have your results sent to you.

Twitter scam

Stop right there! (if you haven’t already). Are you seriously going to give these complete strangers access to your email address too? They already know your Twitter account name, and can post to your Twitter page – now they’ll be able to email you as well!

Who knows what they might send you? Their plan might be to send you spam, a Trojan horse, or a phishing attack. They even have the cheek to say watch out for the message in your spam folder!

Twitter scam

I don’t know what the scammers plan to spam out to you, and it could – of course – be weeks or months before they do, but if you want to find out more follow me on Twitter at @gcluley.

These sorts of rogue applications appear to be popping up more and more on Twitter, whereas previously they were mostly seen only by Facebook users.

If you were unfortunate enough to grant a rogue applications access to your Twitter account, revoke its rights immediately by going to the Twitter website and visiting Settings/Connections and revoking the offending app’s rights.

Don’t make it easy for scammers to make money in this way, and always exercise caution about which third party apps you allow to connect with your social networking accounts.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

  • Hours spent on Twitter? Don’t click on scam spreading virally on Twitter (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • Unfollowed Me rogue application spreads virally on Twitter (pratyushkp.wordpress.com)
  • Twitter 11.6 Hours Survey Scam Spreading Virally (pratyushkp.wordpress.com)
  • 11.6 hours survey scam spreads like wildfire on Twitter (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • Your Online Timer survey scam spreads rapidly on Twitter (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • Profile Spy rogue application spreads virally on Twitter (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • Lord Gaga video banned? Twitter rogue app spread by scammers (pratyushkp.wordpress.com)
  • Barred Lady Gaga video assault spreads on Twitter through rogue … (nigerianspam.com)
  • Virally spreading scam spreads over Twitter (go.theregister.com)
Tags: Cheryl Cole, , , Richard Dawkins, , , Vidal Sassoon
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