"Conmen find social networks to their liking"

[Brendan Burgess]

Good article by Karlin Lillington in today's [broken link removed]

THAT SILLY quiz on Facebook looks fun. One of your friends just filled it out, as you can see from a new post to your newsfeed encouraging you to fill it out, too. So you do.
Among the jokey questions you get asked are your mother’s maiden name, the name of your first pet, your childhood nickname, all used to produce a funny result, automatically posted to all of your friends’ newsfeeds. What a laugh!
A few days later you go to an ATM before heading to lunch – and your card pops back out. No money in the account. You’ve just been social engineered on your social network.
Using information posted on your profile and typed into that funny app – your mother’s maiden name was your reminder for retrieving your password on your online banking site, remember? – hackers had no problem cleaning out your bank account.

 

[MANTO]

Not too sure about this one, it sounds far too simplistic IMO.

Banks will not let you retreive your password through email, also they need access to your account number and for some banks, maybe all? you need a password AND pin number.

 

[Gekko]

Social networking sites offer invaluable information to conmen and thieves.

How often does one see status updates like: "Off to Marbella for 2 weeks...can't wait!"

What one doesn't then see is the thought process of the conman/thief: "Oh really...so your home is vacant for the next fortnight? Happy days!"

 

[MANTO]

Social networking sites offer invaluable information to conmen and thieves.

How often does one see status updates like: "Off to Marbella for 2 weeks...can't wait!"

What one doesn't then see is the thought process of the conman/thief: "Oh really...so your home is vacant for the next fortnight? Happy days!"

Only if you are silly enough to leave the content of your page open to the public.

But sure, there are plenty of those i suppose.