Kind: captions
Language: en
you've probably heard that you need to
be careful about what you post online
well here's a story that'll explain why
once upon a time a nice fellow named Tim
uploaded a picture of himself to his
favorite social
network it wasn't a bad picture maybe a
little goofy but innocent enough little
did Tim know that this photo would be
his
downfall when Tim uploaded his photo to
the internet it was stored in a few
places one of these was the server of
Tim's favorite social network which
allowed all his friends to see
it another was a government server that
picked up lots of information from the
internet in case it could be useful down
the
line and the third was the server of an
identity theft crime
ring back on the social network a few of
Tim's friends gave their approval to his
picture but most ignored it meanwhile
The Social Network made his data
available to an advertising firm they
noticed the Frisbee in Tim's pH photo
and started sending him frisbee ads
hoping that he'd buy more frisbees
unfortunately he would not be able to
because of what happened
next you see the identity theft crime
ring liked Tim's photo much more than
his friends did that's because it showed
his house in the background one of the
pieces of data in the image file was the
exact location where the photo was taken
allowing them to figure out Tim's
address now this crime ring had already
collected some other information about
Tim that he had unwittingly posted
online including his phone number and
Social Security number so they called
Tim's Bank pretended to be him and
tricked the bank into resetting his
password using all of the information
they had needless to say they
transferred all of Tim's money into
their own pockets they also gained
access to his email accounts and sent
his friends malware that stole their
bank account information this was bad
for Tim's social life
to console himself over the loss of his
friends Tim took a vacation halfway
across the world and by strange
coincidence chose the very same country
that had intercepted his photo
unfortunately for poor Tim the Nifty
design in his shorts was also the flag
of a rebel Army trying to overthrow that
country's government and he was
identified as a possible threat so he
was pulled aside at security and denied
entry Tim's story is pretty much a worst
case scenario and is most certainly not
what's going to happen the next time you
post a picture online but each of these
things does happen to people on a daily
basis except for maybe the rebel Army
bit information that you post publicly
can be stored by anyone who finds it and
your private Communications might be
intercepted and read by advertisers news
outlets governments and criminals alike
in fact over 10 million Americans have
their identities stolen each
year so try to be careful about what
information you post online keep all of
your software up to date date and make
secure passwords that are different for
each site you
visit these problems will probably never
go away unless we invent a completely
secure way of communicating and sharing
with each other
online sorry Tim