A word about identity theft?
I made a post a bit ago about identity theft that got tones of thumbs down.
No, you may not have posted the exact dates and locations on that post, but identity theft is huge. People follow your online profiles. We all end up dribbling out peices of our lives here and there. And when the wrong people follow your posts, it ends up badly. And yes, sadly, kids are the new target for id theft. There are kids right now who are walking into their adult life with screwed up credit because of identity theft.
Clearly no one liked my post, but maybe we should take a min and think about just how much personal information we give out over some of these posts.
tons, not tones
It was removed via the report button.
Tagged with: Adult Life • Id Theft • Identity Theft
Filed under: Identity Theft
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I agree with you. A while ago I made a post just like that and everyone gave me a million thumbs down. So I added the person as my contact, went through her questions, used a reverse lookup online, and private messaged her her name, addy, phone number, high school name, hospital she is delivering at, due date, what her car looks like from her picture sites, etc, and said “SEE, a stalker could easily jump you at the hospital when you go to deliver because you put way too much info on yahoo answers for people! Please consider taking some of it down.” This only took about 10 minutes to research.
While it is uncommon we still have stories on the news all the time about psycho ****** who fake pregnancies then gut pregnant women and steal their babies. Don’t be a victim. Keep your private life safe. That is why we don’t put “It’s a boy!” signs in our yards anymore!
i didn’t see your post but i agree wholeheartedly with your premise. a little info here, a little info there. it all seems innocuous enough, but with google linking lots of different posts and sites, pretty soon there’s a lot more information than you would ever have agreed to give a complete stranger. people should be very cautious about the type of information they post online.
it’s not just identity theft; it’s giving out info that hackers will use to figure out online passwords (not just to dumb things like y!a but also to, say, your online bank account) or giving creepy cyber-stalkers way more ammunition than they ought to have. it’s also information that is often traceable by your employer, your grandmother, and your creepy ex-boyfriend. if you wouldn’t announce it to the mobs at the mall, don’t announce it online.
So you’re saying I SHOULDN”T post my Social Security #, Drivers License and Birthdate on here for all to see?
Was it the post about what month/year were your children born in? I didn’t even open that post, it was the first thing I thought of. So if we’re paranoid losers, we’ll be paranoid losers together.
We often post our kids’ first names here, if we have facebook pages it’s easy enough to figure out last names and towns. Add an age and, Voila… a recipe for identity or credit theft.
I’ve had my identity stolen. As much of a nightmare as you think it is to restore/expunge, you end up wishing it were that easy. I spent days in court and at the police station (she got arrested in a ***** prostitution sting). They never fingerprinted her or confirmed her ID. It was awful. I also don’t use my real name on facebook. Won’t happen twice if I can help it.