Cybersecurity Checkup© for November
Toxic Social Media
There have been many security breaches’ this year, most recently Experian; and every time we hear of a new breech, people go on the news and talk about how companies are not protecting our data. The big bad company that does not keep our data safe, from the big bad hacker – but what about you? Are we really just victims of hackers, who are after all of our data that is for sale, on the internet or are we also participants in the hack?
I am often surprised at how much information we willingly publish in the forever world through social media. How often do we wish people a happy birthday publically on Facebook or talk about our children and animals. We discuss freely our eating and drinking habits, significant events, and talk about our faith and political affiliations. As well as, discussing what teams we like and what music and literature we enjoy. These events that we so freely share are all digital pixels that start to create a picture of who we are.
Data is the most important digital asset today, on the internet. While businesses understand that healthcare information is worth ten times the amount credit card data, on the darknet, we continue, as individuals, to freely give our information away, through Toxic Social Media.
Google and Facebook are amongst the biggest companies, to collect user based information. There are data scientists within many organizations today, whose primary job is to make sense of the data that a company is collecting. Social media sites have teams of data scientist who deploy statistical analysis, on the volume of freely gathered data, from their sites. In fact, Facebook market value is based on data they collect, from there users, which is one of the largest test groups in the world. Facebook has been very creative on how they collect user information. We freely fill out a profile, which includes our gender, email address, phone number, where we live, education, and relationship status. Truly more than I personally give my healthcare provider or bank. We click on like to certain brands, food, news articles, and music. Geo-locators track our activities, and let us know when one of our friends will be at an event near us. Never, has there been such a remarkable collection of data sets on social human interaction, all freely given by us!
Social media is truly a brilliant business model, especially considering the monetization of what our data is worth. Listed below by TrendMicro is your digital value:
Passwords are the most valued, at US$75.80.
Health information and medical records are second, valued at an average of US$59.80.
Social Security numbers are third, at US$55.70.
Payment details rank at fourth at US$36.60.
Purchase history is the fifth most valued, at US$20.60.
Physical location information is sixth at US$16.10.
Home address is seventh at US$12.90.
Photos and videos of individuals rank eighth most valued at US$12.20.
Marital Status is pegged at US$8.30.
Finally, name and gender are the least valued at US$2.90.
The value of the numbers are high in some areas, for example, you can buy a list of names of people who have certain medical diseases, for thirty cents a name, based on a person clicking like or searching for information on a certain disease. What have they learned about this week? Using predictive analysis, there is someone, right now, assigning a score to you, based on what their research tells them about your health. How long will you live? What should you be charged for health insurance or life insurance? Are you a good credit risk, will you live long enough to pay back a loan, based on the fact you wanted to learn more about high blood pressure? Do your selfies show you consuming more alcohol or fried food or smoking or engaging in extreme sports; how will that data be translated?
It is time to purge Toxic Social Media. Take a few minutes to look through your profiles and see how much personal information you are freely giving away to the hacker or scientist, who want to make a living off your warm fuzzing feelings for dogs.
Do not answer questions, just because they are asked. Does social media really need to know when you were married, what year you graduated from high school, or where your child goes to school? You need to be aware of the questions you are asking and the information you are providing your friends; they are not the only ones following your likes, vacations, and purchases.
Also, go through the pictures you have shared, and see how many are truly offering too much information, about your private life. What post and MEME’s are you hitting “like” to? Yes, you do support the Veteran’s, but who is asking? What kind of tracking tags are attached to the nice picture of an eagle?
Stay safely connected by being aware of your information, and what data you are giving away. The digital world is a new frontier, and free can be very costly if you are not careful.
