Oversharing

Oversharing information affects far more of us than we might think. Whether you’ve shared a seemingly innocent photo of your friends or family – or unwittingly given away details of your banking or passport details – you could be revealing information that is invaluable to a fraudster or identity thief.

How to avoid oversharing

• One of the best ways to not overshare on social media is to make sure you’ve set your account to private. Everything you share or post online tells people something about you such as your habits and location – consider whether you want to share these with everyone.
• Never enter details that could be pieced together and exploited by a fraudster – e.g. your age, birthday, address, workplace, first school, mother’s maiden name, relatives’ or pets’ names, or other obvious passwords.
• By granting access to your social media data in order to enter a competition, get a reward or take part in a survey, you may be giving away confidential information. Check terms & conditions and even then be careful what you’re agreeing to others knowing about you or your account.
• Posting and sharing photos of when you’re away on holiday or business could be signalling to would-be burglars that your home is empty. Also, turn off location services in your app settings on all your devices.
• What goes online, stays online. Think twice before you click to post in case so you don’t embarrass or otherwise harm yourself or others. 70%* of employers use social media to screen candidates before hiring so always ask friends if it’s OK before posting photos of them or their children.
• Think twice about posts and photos you’re sharing. Driving licences, passports, some letters and other documents contain sensitive information that you need to prove your ID.

* Figures taken from 2017 survey from CareerBuilders: https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/social-media-survey-2017