7 Reasons Why Oversharing on Social Media is Perilous

Do you like to share personal information on social media? Let us know in the comments. You can share some things like articles on your website (if it doesn’t contain much personal data). However, always keep in mind that posting too much personal information (a.k.a oversharing) is very dangerous. Here are 7 reasons why it is the truth.

Table of Contents

Here are the primary points in this article:

1. You Are at Risk of Spear-phishing
2. You Are More Likely to be Hacked
3. You Are More Likely to Suffer from Crime
4. Cyberbullying Relies on Personalization
5. Anything Online Will Probably Stay there Forever
6. It is not Worth it
7. You will Feel Vulnerable and Regret That

Also, we’ll talk about things that we absolutely cannot share no matter what happens. The seven consequences above apply to emails, phone calls, and even messaging software as well.

So, let’s dive right into the issue now.

1. You Are at Risk of Spear-phishing

Remember the hassle when we talk about clicking a phishing link? Well, every email could be spam, especially if you share too much. If we share our primary email address on social media, hackers seeking live addresses can phish you. Scammers want to ensure that the email doesn’t go into a non-existent mailbox.

Other than your revealed email address, oversharing brings another risk for phishing. Keep in mind that phishing doesn’t entirely mean sending template-like emails to everyone: Scammers often try to personalize the composition to make them sound more reliable and authoritative. This action is called spear-phishing, and these campaigns often only target a single individual.

First, the scammer researches about you to find clues that can customize you. They can find your nationalities by looking at your photos, personal information (e.g., birthday, home address) to pretend to be a reliable source (e.g., a bank), or even your interests, hobbies, and personalities by inspecting your messages. Keep in mind that those are all clues that can help attackers to craft an email to bypass your defenses and let you click on a phishing link or open a malicious attachment.

2. You Are More Likely to be Hacked

Other than phishing, personal data can be directly used to guess passwords. Attackers undoubtedly know that many people are using this algorithm, even though it is unsafe. For example, if your password’s main elements are your birth year, month, and day, hackers could quickly get control of your account. Addresses, names of family members and pets, etc., could also be easily found online. Remember that the attacker behind the scenes maybe your friend or someone who has thoroughly researched about you.

What’s worse, even if a hacker didn’t find out your password, they can simply go to the “Forgot password” option and enter the answers of security questions. Remember to keep them anonymous AND irrelevant to any of your personal data!

So, other than changing your weak passwords like that, make sure not to reveal too much personal information. You never know when a password hint is related to your personal information!

3. You Are More Likely to Suffer from Crime

You may ask, ‘Have we reached the scariest part of oversharing yet?’ Probably not, especially if you have a lot of expensive items and confidential documents at home.

In fact, if you need to post selfies or photos you have taken on social media or other platforms, remember to eliminate sensitive information such as addresses and passwords. Prevent yourself from publishing these photos altogether because it won’t bring you benefits. Remember to turn off the real-time geolocation tracking feature on your phone if possible. Criminals can somehow get that data and try to take your valuable items, or even attack you, if you’re not at home.

4. Cyberbullying Relies on Personalization

Imagine that you send the same phishing email to 1,000 people. Probably most of them will find it malicious and report you, right? If that’s not enough, try to think if you are bullied, but the facts mentioned don’t match yours. You’ll be annoyed and report the bully, right? Cyberbullying works the same, too. However, a cyberbully’s surge of personalization is much higher than a scammer’s willingness.

They actively find interests, routines, personalities, and weaknesses to customize the offensive message. So, don’t let a stranger know all of those in the first place — there’s a good chance that the person behind is a cyberbully wanting you to be the target. That way, it will hurt you more (and make you less aware) than an email sent to a large group of people.

5. Anything Online Will Probably Stay there Forever

Now, here’s the nastiest thing about oversharing: Even if you deleted your post a fraction of a second after posting it, it will stay much longer than it should. When you share your post, copies have already been made, especially if your followers turned the autosave photo feature on. Search engines are actively crawling for social media sites and will show them in the search results.

Now, you may think pressing the “Delete” button and receiving a prompt that says “it can’t be undone” makes you feel safer, but in reality, it’s not. That’s due to existing backup copies, which can come into play when the main copy is destroyed or accidentally removed. Furthermore, that does not delete local copies and copies on other devices.

Even if the data is permanently deleted from the device, the data is still intact. It is only available for overwriting. That measure is to speed up the deletion process and help recover the files in case it is deleted by accident.

Let’s talk about the backup copies now. The backups may never delete the information that isn’t existent on the main server. That way, a hacker with a “URL guesser” can easily access your embarrassing photos if the hacker discovers the IP address of just one of the backup servers.

6. It is not Worth it

The last five points talk about the damage and persistence of oversharing. Also, there are two more benefits in this article to discourage oversharing.

Firstly, sharing too much information isn’t worth it. Although some people like sending their personal photos, home address, birthday, and much more information on social media, it is not worth it in general.

Even though you may think that your action means you’re honest, it’s not. Criminals not only detect physical evidence, but they can find clues online, too. Take a look at all 5 risks of oversharing again. You may realize that it does more harm than good, especially if the content contains the most sensitive data.

Remember to read the section below to define personal information that you should not share.

7. You will Feel Vulnerable and Regret That

Moreover, oversharing can have a negative mental impact. As you know more about cybersecurity, you may feel worried while you found out that you publicized too much data. Therefore, you might feel more vulnerable to cyberattacks and threats. That’s what you should feel, and that has to motivate you to solve the problem and prevent that in the future.

Meanwhile, you may also regret what you did when you’re unaware of this problem. Fight this feeling and immediately delete the posts containing sensitive personal information. Although it may stay online forever, it is still better to click the “Delete” button that to neglect to do so.

What Shouldn’t You Share Online?

Well, there is a lot of personal information that you must not make it go online. They are sensitive information, and posting it on social media is oversharing, which can bring great harm. The more often you post them, the more dangerous your accounts and identities are.

So, let’s get to the list right away.

• Passwords
• Password hints
• Bank information
• Your answers to security questions
• Your social security number
• Sensitive/Important documents
• Your private email address
• Your home address
• Your private phone number
• Your current location
• Your vacation plans
• Secrets
• Embarrassing information
• Anything else you don’t want to be put online

Furthermore, here are some more tips to protect your privacy:

• Make your passwords and answers to security questions unrelated to private information
• Create strong, long, and unpredictable passwords
• Create another public email address, and make your primary one private
• Turn off the geolocation tracking feature on your devices
• Erase all sensitive details before uploading a photo
• If you want to reveal your vacation plans, do it after you return home
• If you cannot avoid sharing your birthdate and name, provide the partial thing if possible
• Review social media settings to turn on new security features
• Always be prepared to take action when being hacked

Conclusion

So, in this article, we’ve talked about oversharing and its hazards. Remember to be careful when sharing information on social media, and don’t fall into phishing scams — they are even more severe than sharing too much. We hope you can look at the references to learn more about that topic.

References and Credits

1. (2017, May 29). Giving Too Much Away? Most People Share Personal Information Online – And Young People Are Most at Risk | Kaspersky. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2017_giving-too-much-away
2. (2017, May 19). Stranger danger: the connection between sharing online and losing the data we love | Kaspersky Official Blog. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/my-precious-data-report-three/16883/
3. (2019, December 2). Spear phishing campaigns—they’re sharper than you think. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/12/02/spear-phishing-campaigns-sharper-than-you-think/
4. (n.d.). Spear Phishing Definition and Prevention | Kaspersky. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/spear-phishing
5. (2020, November 5). Social Media and Cybersecurity – Navigating the Risks. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://home.sophos.com/en-us/security-news/2020/social-media-and-cybersecurity.aspx
6. (n.d.). The consequences of oversharing – HSBC Private Banking. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://privatebanking.hsbc.com/wih/beyond-wealth/cybersecurity/the-consequences-of-oversharing/
7. (2015, May 16). Why the Cyberbully Chose Your Kid? | Kids Safety. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://kids.kaspersky.com/why-the-cyberbully-chooses-you/
8. Amy Blake. (2019, May 17). Think before your post: understand social media risks – IT – News and Announcements. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://blogs.mtu.edu/it/2019/05/17/think-before-you-post/
9. Andy O’Donnell. (2020, February 24). What Not to Post on Facebook and Social Media – Lifewire. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://www.lifewire.com/things-you-should-never-post-on-social-networks-2487415