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Facebook Wants my Social Security Number!

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WTH Facebook? Generally,  I don’t have a problem giving out my SSN. That might seem contrary to the advice I give, but frankly, our SSNs are everywhere and if my insurance company needs it, I’ll generally just question them on it, maybe resist a bit, and if they insist, and I need that insurance policy, I’ll cough it up.

facebook security

My identity in regards to “new account fraud” is protected via a credit freeze and I also have identity theft protection in place. So between the two, I’m pretty locked down. This is the advice I give everyone. So I’m generally not alarmed or concerned when asked for my SSN.

BUT, today friggin Facebook asked for it and of all the company’s or government agency’s on the planet to ask for this level of personal identifying sensitive information, Facebook is the world’s single most notorious abuser of privacy in the history of the world.

There have been countless breaches and privacy issues with Facebook and this is so over the top I can’t even believe they have the nuts to ask for a copy of my Social Security card.

Here’s how it played out….An email came in from Facebook subject line “Your sales are on hold”  with the message:

Hi Robert Siciliano: Security Awareness Fraud & Personal Security Expert,

When Robert Siciliano: Security Awareness Fraud & Personal Security Expert’s shop was set up, Robert Siciliano’s information was entered. To help keep Facebook secure, we need to confirm the identity of people representing a business on Facebook or Instagram.

Your sales have been temporarily put on hold until we can confirm Robert’s information. This is a standard process and should only take a few minutes to complete.

Once you confirm Robert’s information, you’ll be able to receive payments again.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

WTH?!! OK, sure. So I sell my books on my Facebook page and e-commerce is involved. There’s a tax thing going on here. But they aren’t asking for my EIN or are engaging me in a formal process to vet my viability as a tax payer. They are asking for a copy of my SSN in the form of a scan to “verify” me!

I clicked a link on Facebook to see where this debacle would take me and see here:

So I clicked “Contact Us” to voice my frustration and my response was:

And I’ll repeat: “Screw off. I’m not sending Facebook a copy of my SSN card. WTH is wrong with you? What are my other options?

Stay tuned for how this BS turns out.

To be continued. Robert.

Robert Siciliano personal security and identity theft expert and speaker is the author of Identity Theft Privacy: Security Protection and Fraud Prevention: Your Guide to Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft and Computer Fraud. See him knock’em dead in this Security Awareness Training video.

Should You Use Facebook to Login to Websites?

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Have you ever used Facebook to sign onto another site? Many of us do this pretty blindly simply because it is very convenient. But, this convenience could come at a cost.

You know the drill. You go to a website and it says “Log In With Facebook.” or Google. Usually, it just takes a couple of clicks and no logging in with other usernames or passwords. However, when you do this, Facebook essentially becomes your online identity. This means that anyone who knows these credentials have access to your preferences, posts, and most importantly, your personal information. What’s more is that you might be unknowingly giving permission to a third party to access your profile, view your online activities, and get information about your friends.

What Can You Do About It?

There are some things that you can do to keep yourself safe. First, of course, you should have a different username and password for all accounts. Make sure your passwords are strong and consider using a password manager. This helps to create strong passwords and keeps them safe for you.

If you play games, do quizzes, or other things on a social media platform, make sure that only necessary apps are connected. Stop connecting other apps.

You should also take some time to look at the settings you have set up for your social media accounts. Adjust them to make sure you are protected. Finally, make sure that you are logging out of your social media account when you are done with it. If you log into your social media account on your tablet or mobile phone, make sure that the lock screen is on before putting it away. Also, of course, make sure that you have a strong passcode on your device.

Control Your Data

Now is the time to take control of your data. When you choose to use a social media site to link with third-party services, apps, and sites, the social sites say that it will enhance your experience for the better. It also can make your online time more productive. At the same time, however, it can open you up to exposure, and even be an open door for hackers. It is important to understand what type of permission you are giving these apps when you click “Log in with Facebook.” Finally, if you are a parent, you should make sure that you understand what your kids are doing on social media, and take a look at what type of permission your kids have given to third-parties.

Robert Siciliano personal security and identity theft expert and speaker is the author of Identity Theft Privacy: Security Protection and Fraud Prevention: Your Guide to Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft and Computer Fraud. See him knock’em dead in this Security Awareness Training video.

Time to check your Facebook Privacy settings

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Did you know that, once again, Facebook has changed its privacy policies? At the top of the FB page is a lock icon. Click it for more privacy settings.

14DWhat do visitors see? To view how visitors see your Facebook page, go to “Timeline and Tagging,” then hit “Review what other people see on your timeline/View As.”

Posts by friends. Click “Timeline and Tagging” to prevent a visitor’s unwanted post from showing. Then click “Enabled,” as this will allow you to “review posts friends tag you in before they appear.” Designate who can post on your timeline, ideally just “Only Me.”

Unauthorized logins. To prevent someone from logging onto your FB account, go to “Security” and click “Login Approvals,” and proceed from there. This way if someone tries to login from a computer other than your own, they’ll need to see the security code that FB sends to your mobile phone.

Search engine access. If you don’t want everyone finding your Facebook page by simply entering your name into a search engine, click “Privacy,” then “No” to “Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline?”

Old posts. In the “Privacy” setting is an option for limiting old images. You may not want everyone to see all of your timeline. You can also set up things so that you can review new posts by others as they come in.

Liked businesses. Where it says “Ads and Friends” click “Ads,” then “Edit.” Next click “No One” where it says “Pair my social actions with ads.” This will prevent you from becoming associated with a particular business.

Apps. Go to “Apps” if you don’t want everyone seeing what apps you use on Facebook. Change the “App Visibility” to “Only Me.” In “Apps Settings” are more options.

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to BestIDTheftCompanys.com discussing identity theft prevention.

15 Top Facebook Privacy Tips

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You wouldn’t have to worry about privacy issues on Facebook if you didn’t post sensitive, private information on Facebook…such as information that one day can be used against you. And really, you should share only what you consider “professional” information, even with family. Just stop with the nonsense.

At any rate, it’s important to know how to use Face14Dbook’s privacy features, which change from time to time. Here are useful tips.

  1. Go to Start, then Account, then Privacy Settings, then Edit Your Profile.
  2. In the Edit Your Profile feature, go through everything there and set things up. There are multiple data fields. To get their drop-down menus, hit the lock on the right of the fields.
  3. Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline” Set this so your friends can’t make posts that include you that appear on your timeline without your knowledge and/or permission. A friend may tag you in something racist or sexist that makes you look bad by association.
  4. “Ads and Friends.” Set this so people can’t see which businesses you have friended if you’d like. For example, if you’re Liked a “bondage” shop because it was funny to Like it, it might not be in your best interests that a potential employer sees this.
  5. “Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline” Set this to prevent people from finding your timeline entries when they do Google searches. Theres no reason a private FB needs this setting live.
  6. “Limit the audience for posts you’ve shared with friends of friends or Public?” Set this to avoid letting a wide audience see your old posts. You may have had a cock tail or two one night and posted something you may regret the next day.
  7. “Log-in approval” This is big. signing up for this ensures that no one else can easily log into your Facebook account.
  8. Friends Lists. Click Edit Friends after you click Account. Go to Create a List to categorize your “friends,” such as those from work only or “share everything.”
  9. To restrict access, you can choose something on your friends lists to narrow the field, such as your created category of “childhood close friends.” Play around with the options. You’ll see an option called Custom, which breaks down to Select Specific People. Be patient and tinker around a bit. If you don’t want your nosy neighbor to see anything, click “Hide this from.”
  10. Under Privacy Settings is Apps and Websites. Other people’s apps can take your information and post it elsewhere. Go to Apps you Use, and How People Bring Your Info Into Apps They Use. You’ll be able to tell who’s taking information from you. But you can disable this too. If you only want select people to know you have an FB page, turn off the Public Searches function. Then, if someone googles your name, your FB page won’t show in the results.
  11. The How Tags Work feature controls tags about you on your page only. You’ll see an option called Friends Can Check You Into Places. Turn this off. Otherwise, one of your “friends” could blab personal information about you. (Gee, at this point, it’s easy to understand why some people just don’t have a FB account—including the most social, outgoing people you’ve ever known.)
  12. To see how your profile looks to visitors, click View As at the top right.
  13. Click on How You Connect under Privacy Settings. This feature determines/controls who can interact with you and view your posts. Again, play around with this.
  14. The Block Lists under Privacy Settings will block whomever you please from contacting you.
  15. Continue spending time in Privacy Settings to further refine your preferences.

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to BestIDTheftCompanys.com discussing  identity theft prevention.

Predators use Facebook to groom Kids

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Lock this guy up for good. That’s a most fitting motto for Brandon McIntyre, 22, who pretended he was “Katie Thompson” on Facebook and threatened to kill a girl’s family if she refused to go on trips with him.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-online-risks-sign-road-banner-image34668294This New Jersey nutcase made another ridiculous threat (ridiculous, because, how could he think that even young victims could take him seriously?) to a 12-year-old, telling her he was a cop who’d have her expelled from school and sent to state prison for failing to obey a police officer. The “order” was to send him explicit photos of herself.

Posing as a police officer, he even told a woman via texting he’d have her daughter taken away if she refused to go on a date with him. He could get 30 years in federal prison and fines totaling half a million dollars.

The next predator was a bit more convincing, using Facebook to talk a boy into ducking out of his home in the middle of the night to meet him. Adam Brown, 21, was caught by the victim’s mother. Brown got the boy’s confidence first by posting videos of himself and telling jokes. The boy’s mother worked nights and his grandmother watched him and his siblings.

One night she returned to find their dog acting strange; she discovered the boy wasn’t in his bed. She contacted him via cell and he said he was just out walking. She drove out and picked him up, took away his phone and computer, and demanded his passwords. She then gained access to the cyber dialogue between him and Brown. In the dialogue, Brown told the boy that the boy was cute. And the dialogue got worse. The boy actually met Brown, who had threatened suicide if he refused.

His mother told Brown, after contacting him, to cease contact with her son, but he contacted him again and made creepy comments.

  • Get full access to your kids social accounts.
  • Monitor their device activity without notice.
  • Have in-depth detailed conversations about how predators lure kids.
  • Read every news report about these issues and discuss with your kid.
  • Turn off all wireless and wired internet at night so kids can’t have access.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to BestHomeSecurityCompanys.com discussing burglar proofing your home on Fox Boston. Disclosures.

10 most dangerous Facebook Scams

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Twenty percent of the world’s population is “on” Facebook—that’s well over a billion people.

14DTop 10 Most Popular Facebook Scams

  1. Profile visitor stats. It’s all about vanity. It doesn’t take long for any new Facebook user to see an ad offering to reveal how many people are viewing your profile. You can even find out who’s viewing. It must make a lot of FB users feel validated to know how many people are viewing them and just whom, because this scam comes in at the top.

    Is it really that important to know how many people are viewing your profile? Even if your self-worth depends on this information, Facebook can’t provide it. These ads are scams by hackers.

  2. Rihanna sex tape. What a sorry life someone must be leading to be lured into clicking a link that promises a video of a recording star having sex. Don’t click on any Rihanna sex tape link, because the only intimacy you’ll ultimately witness is a hacker getting into your computer.
  3. Change your profile color. Don’t click on anything that relates to changing your FB profile color. Facebook is blue. Get over it. You’ll never get red, purple, pink, black, grey, white, red, orange or brownish-magenta. Forget it. Deal. If you see this offering in your news feed, ignore it. It’s a scam.
  4. Free Facebook tee shirt. Though this offering seems quite innocuous, anyone who never rushes to click things will realize that this can’t possibly be legitimate. Do you realize how much a billion tee shirts cost? Even if you don’t know that one-fifth the world’s population uses Facebook, you should know that an enormous number of people use it and they aren’t getting a t-shirt.
    1. Where would Facebook get the money to 1) produce all those tee shirts (even if one-tenth of FB users wanted one, that’s still a LOT of money), and 2) mail the shirts out, and 3) pay reams of people to package the shirts and address the packages? People, THINK before you click!
  5. See your top 10 Facebook stalkers. This is just so funny, how can anyone take it seriously and be lured into clicking it?
  6. Free giveaways. It’s cliché time: Nothing’s free in this world—certainly not on Facebook. End of story.
  7. See if a friend has deleted you. This, too, sounds suspicious. And besides, is it really that important if a “friend” has deleted you? Do you even personally know every individual who has ever friended you? This feature does not exist. You’re better off pretending that nobody would ever want to delete you because you’re so special! But actually, there are plug-ins available that perform this function, but still, stay away.
  8. Find out who viewed your profile. Again, here’s a scam that works well on people who have too much time on their hands. This function doesn’t exist on Facebook.
  9. Just changed my Facebook theme and it’s rad! Ignore this at all costs.
  10. Tragedy of the day. Whenever there is something horrific going on such as Mother Nature getting all murderous or some manmade disaster or even a celebrity dying, you can be sure Facebook scammers are on top of the breaking news with a “video” or “photo” that simply isn’t. Just don’t click it.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

15 Facebook Fiascos to Watch Out For

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The following 15 activities, all of which are facilitated by Facebook and other social networking websites, are causing lots of heartache and headaches:

1. Posting illegal activities. In the little town where I grew up, 30 kids recently faced the wrath of their parents, school officials, law enforcement, and the Boston media, all because someone posted their party pictures, which depicted underage drinking, on Facebook. It’s never okay to show illegal behavior.

2. Account hijacking. Phishers imitate the Facebook email template, tricking victims into believing they have received an official Facebook message. Once you enter your login credentials, criminals can take over your account, pose as you, and ask your friend for money. Always log into your Facebook account manually, rather than going through a link in an email.

3. Facebook bullying. It is so much easier to write something awful about someone than it is to say it to them personally. Words hurt. Vicious words have led to kids committing suicide. Friend your kids and see what their online dialogue looks like.

4. Online reputation management (or lack thereof). I’ve seen teachers, professors, students, officials, police, and others from just about every walk of life get fired because of words or pictures they posted on Facebook. Remember, if what you post wouldn’t pass the potential employer test, don’t do it.

5. Social media identity theft. When someone snags your name, posts a photo as you, and begins to communicate while impersonating you, the effects can be devastating. Grab your name on as many sites as possible, including Facebook. Knowem.com can help speed up this process.

6. Financial identity theft. Bad guys use Facebook to crack your passwords. Most online accounts use “qualifying questions” to verify your identity. These questions tend to involve personal information, such as your kids’, other relatives’, or pets’ names or birthdays. When the bad guys find this information on your Facebook page, they can reset your passwords and steal your identity. So limit what you post, and lock down your privacy settings.

7. Burglaries. Criminals have been known to check Facebook statuses to determine if potential victims are home or not. Publicly declaring that you’re not home creates an opportune time for burglars to ransack your house. Never post this information on Facebook.

8. Geo-stalking. Location-based GPS technologies incorporated into social media are perfect tools for stalkers to hone in on their target. Please just turn these settings off.

9. Corporate spying. By posing as an employee, setting up a Facebook group, and inviting all the company’s employees to join, the bad guy gathers intelligence that enables him to commit espionage from within the organization.

10. Harassment. This goes beyond bullying. In one example, a woman was on a camping trip and unreachable by phone when her Facebook account was taken over. The “harasser” wrote all kinds of desperate status updates posing as the woman, leading concerned friends and law enforcement to her house, where they broke down her door.

11. Government spying. Who is that new friend? The AP reports, “U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects.” Just don’t be a “suspect.”

12. Sex offenders. Facebook is perfect for sex offenders, who pose as real nice people until they gain their victims’ trust. Always be on guard, and do background checks, at least.

13. Scams. It’s just a matter of setting up a fake Facebook page and marketing it to a few people, who then send it to their friends, who send it to their friends. An Ikea scam hooked 40,000 unsuspecting victims with the promise of a $1,000 gift card. Like mom said, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true.

14. Legal liabilities. In New York, a judge recently ruled that material posted on Facebook and other social networking websites can be used as evidence in court, regardless of whether the posts were hidden by privacy settings.

15. Zero privacy. If you think for one second that what you post on Facebook is for you and your friends’ eyes only, you simply don’t understand how the Internet works. Many sites are capable of pulling data from the bowels of Facebook, despite any privacy settings you may have in place. And that data can be stored forever, which means that it can come back to bite you long after you’ve forgotten you ever posted it.

Robert Siciliano, personal security expert contributor to Just Ask Gemalto, discusses hackers on social media on CNN. Disclosures