How oversharing on Internet can lead to identity theft

As Internet is a free virtual world, one cant help but overshare on it, keeping less in mind how it could lead to preposterous consequences, including identity theft.

As Internet is a free virtual world, one cant help but overshare on it, keeping less in mind how it could lead to preposterous consequences, including identity theft.

Netizens tend to share a lot of their personal details including intimate details of travel plans, or what they really think of their boss, for instance.

However, such information could potentially pose risk to one's financial accounts, as pointed by ZDNET writer Zach Whittaker.

According to ABC News, users shouldn't use the Geolocation Tags feature that could reveal their exact addresses instead of a city, which could easily allow someone to match the Tweets or Instagram pictures with the address and give it to financial companies to verify the identity.

Posting a picture of the financial or personal data, like a new driver's license or credit card, is another way of providing easy access to information that someone could use to socially engineer their way into a user's bank account.

Sites like Airbnb, Airpnp or Lyft encourage people to make money off their existing physical assets like cars, extra rooms or conveniently-located bathrooms. However, they could also engender a false sense of security about having strangers around a user's personal stuff.

One of the most overused aspects of oversharing is 'Check-ins'. Regular check-ins could potentially help burglars keep a diary about a user's outings, complete with time, so they could easily break in their house when they are at a party expected to end late, the report added.