It may not sound like much but many people need to learn how can you protect yourself from social engineering.
This is because social engineering is at the heart of any scam online. It’s what truly drives most cases of extortion, blackmail, harassment, stalking and more. In fact, without it most of the above crimes would not exist today.
To protect yourself from social engineering you should never give out your information online to anyone. And this means never anything at all. In this type of crime people can engineer information together to complete a whole profile and steal what they want.
You see, even just a little piece of information can go a long way to a cyber-criminal. And, think about this. If they know what car you drive, around where you live, where you hang out, what you like to eat etc.
They may have just enough information to steal and extort someone online.
You must be careful on all websites today from Bumble to Facebook. Cyber criminals are all over the internet just waiting to steal your information.
The General Rule is, if you do not know them, do not tell them anything, ever!
How Criminals Find People Online
There was a study done by a police officer in Canada who was part of online forensics investigation. By befriending a young woman online and gaining only basic information, he was able to figure out her address.
Social engineering takes on many forms with chat or messenger applications such as on Facebook or other websites. Many times, the they will flat out ask you for your information or they will pretend to be the opposite sex to gain your trust.
Then they will ask you for your Gmail address or chat username. Once they have this information they can use it against you.
What Social Engineering Really Is
Social engineering is a fancy term for someone who is just piecing together information in an attempt to strike when they have enough information.
It may take a scammer a while to build a full information profile. But, once they do, they have everything needed to strike a victim.
Social engineering does not have to involve fancy equipment. It can be done over the telephone easily.
This is how it works on a phone. The is trying to gain information about a person so they can steal their information and use it against them.
All they must do is call the household of the victim, talk to someone in the house with a made-up story about being a computer repairman.
They would then persuade the person to unlock their computer with social engineering.
Once they have access to their computer, they are free to go through files and find whatever they can use against the person.
H3 – Protecting Yourself and Your Family
Never give out any personal information to anyone under any circumstances whether on the phone, using a computer or in person.
Always instruct family members to never give out any information to anyone ever! This includes, on the phone, online or in any chat program.
Information theft is big business online. Criminals steal information for huge paydays.
Can You Get Help If You Already Gave Out Your Info?
Yes, you absolutely can.
Digital Forensics is always standing by, ready to help you.
How does Digital Forensics help?
We help by taking away what protects the criminal most. We take away their anonymity and expose them quickly. This leaves them feeling vulnerable and at this point they do not even care about you any longer.
Once we expose them, we then work with local authorities to put them out of business fast!
We have worked hard to develop technology that exposes these scammers and you can only get it at Digital Forensics Corp.
