Social Networking
You work hard to make your living and to support yourself and those you care about.
You probably don’t want to see it all go up in smoke by someone taking your identity to use it for their own gain.
Identity theft can enter your life in many ways. Online, or offline its easily accomplished if someone is determined enough and we aren’t careful enough.
Identity theft can also take several forms.
We meet and make friends with people every day, and in some cases all it takes are for us to trust those people just a bit too much. It is so much easier to just ask someone for their account details, to their banking, their online accounts or anything else.
Surprisingly enough, many people will just readily give them, in spite of being warned not to.
This is known as social networking and frankly, it works.
I personally asked five people, folks I didn’t know well, what kinds of things they used for their passwords, and said I was just surveying to put the results into a study.
The fact was, they never even asked me about the study, didn’t care and although some of them didn’t give me their passwords, they DID however offer “small” hints such as.. I always use my middle name. No one would ever think of that.. (Oh I’m SURE not) …social networking in action..
Play it smart. If someone asks you your password, EVEN if they are in employ with the company in question, simply say no, that you don’t understand why its necessary for them to have it to do the job that you want done..
If the information is for a web site, or working on including something for you, common sense says they do need that.
If its NOT, but is information of a personal nature, or information that has financial data in the same place… play it smart and tell them no..They may be perfectly legitimate, or they may be practicing social networking on you
If it IS necessary, one of the supervisors from that company can come back and request it and you will offer it. In this way at least you have some recourse with the company.
Social networking only works because we give them what they need to know.
When we don’t, we get to keep a lot more of our own money, and a bit of our self respect too.
