Saturday, August 23, 2008

How Safe is your identity


In a world where all of us have put our lives on the internet, with blogs, myspace, facebook, digg, flicker, and various other methods of getting our information in public view we have all put ourselves at risk. Browsing through my google reader I came across "How I stole Someone's identity" which is an amazing article of how someone was able to get get bank information changed by doing some simple password changes. How did he know the answers to the security questions to email accounts and bank accounts....simple he looked at her blog site which gave him all the information he needed, well most of the information.

I think about the information that I have floating around out there and I did a search on my real name, then my user name, and then my blog names and nothing really stood out to me. I don't get that personal on the web, I just have simple information nothing that would help anyone get the answers to my security questions. Most people have the standard security questions, mother's maiden name, and date of birth or something along the lines of that. Try changing those out for more difficult ones information that only you would know, or if you are able to make your own security questions do so and make it some off the wall information like:
What is your favorite brand of toilet paper?
What is the name of your kindergarden teacher?
or find some private information that you wouldn't share with anyone:
What was the nickname your parents had for you?
what is your greatest fear?
what is your greatest fantasy?

Do a search on your name, check your blogs, and other pages to check exactly what kind of information you are just handing to people interested in screwing you over.

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