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Information Education:
1 thing you should not search on online search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others
Scammers, hackers, and cybercriminals are good at learning and using your digital footprint
Scammers, hackers, and cybercriminals are good at learning and using your digital footprint. Image by Sammy-Williams from Pixabay
Have you ever wondered if there is anyone out there learning your online footprint? In case you haven’t, be hinted that Identity thieves have their eyes on your digital presence and not just old flames and curious colleagues. . It doesn’t take something as dramatic as a security breach at a major company to dig up the dirt on you, though.
Identity theft has been on the rise since the beginning of the pandemic, endangering the personal data of online users and scammers, online hackers, and cybercriminals usually start with the plain old internet which is the path of least resistance, but they have to know that you exist first. Acquiring that knowledge makes it easier to become a victim not just in their hands but at their mercy.
The 1 thing you must not try searching in an online search
Password hacking is possible with searching yourself in an online search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo search. Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Cybercriminals, hackers, and scammers are looking closely at your personal details on people’s search engines, social media sites, and more. There is this one thing you must avoid searching in any online search engine – be it in Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, AOL, Ask.com, DuckDuckGo, and others. That one thing you dare not search for online is putting your name into the search engines. Once hackers get their sticky fingers on your most important personal details just because you searched yourself on an online search engine, all hell can break loose.
According to Yahoo News, A quick search of your name alone generates links to dozens of what cybersecurity experts call “people search engines,” kind of like the internet versions of telephone books, making it easier for cybercriminals to find more than enough leads to get any information on your personal details like your home address, email address, phone number, birth date, and relatives even though the information may not always be 100% complete as plenty of these sites don’t even require membership access.
Such leads bind them into putting your social media accounts top of their online searches too. Of course, there are sorts of personal information: your hometown, workplace, hobbies and experience, marital status, an all-too-common security question on many social media account users’ profiles. In fact, when scammers identify your main social media account, for example (people search engines can help them narrow down which “Clare Mark” is actually you), they can target you right then and there.
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How hackers get access to your personal details and password
Hackers are hungry for intimate information like your social security number, bank account number, and passwords, and with a plethora of weapons in their arsenal, from phishing emails to password hacking, it is easier for them to connect the dots until a full profile of your life materializes — and from there, they can then guess your passwords, impersonate you in an attempt to take over your accounts or send you malicious links disguised as friendly emails.
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