Be careful of all kinds of social media asking for various bits of information! They seem innocent, but are they really? Give nothing away. Call the company direct, using their actual phone number, if you wish to discuss anything.
We’ve all seen these posts, often from your friends and colleagues who have already responded. What is your favourite food? What was you first car? What sort of pet did you have growing up? Who is your football team? Looks like your answers to the classic “security questions” setup on your accounts don’t you think?
Who do you think might be gathering all this information? Everyone bad on the internet is looking for this information.
When mixed with what they can already gleam from your systems, and phone calls, they can put it all together and start to build quite extensive picture of your security.
Phone call. “Good morning Sir, this is your bank calling”….”What Barclays?”……”Yes sir, it’s Barclays” and what ever other scam they do.
Email “Your password will expire, please change it here, or your xxxx will cease to work”
The classic, is the phone call with “Hi we are (name any company you might use), we have a wonderful offer, but before we continue can I ask you some security questions..DATE OF BIRTH, FULL NAME, FULL ADDRESS WITH POSTCODE, MOTHERS MAIDEN NAME.
Surprisingly, we can all give bits of this information away. We might be expecting a call from our bank, or our phone provider, based on an outstanding issue. The hacker phishing for information sometimes just gets lucky and emails/rings at the right time.
