Social Media and Smartphone Users Experiencing Increased Identity Fraud
As we talked about in class many people have issues with their privacy and what they want to be public knowledge and what they want to keep to themselves. A lot of people have information they do not want out in the public for everyone to know, and personal things that are better off not shared with everyone. In this technology age often times many users have a lot of data on their phones that could be harmful to either themselves or other people. Whether it be text messages, pictures, emails or anything else, many people feel that their phone is a place that belongs to them and a lot of information stored in the phone is their private information. As in any situation no one wants their personal information stolen and then either sent out or taken by another person without their consent.
In this article they talk about how fraud is up 13% from 2010 to 2011, amongst smartphone and social media users. Fraud is a serious issue and no one wants to have to deal with it. Many people have a lot of information they don't want to share on social media sites that can be compromised by the fraud. This shows that maybe it is not a good idea to keep yourself logged into all your social media sites at all times. Many people do not put a lock code to access their phone thus anyone who can get their hands on the device can compromise all of your data, and act as you.
I found it very interesting that in the article they stated,
"Inappropriate sharing of information via social media could be contributing to an increase in fraud, according to Jim Van Dyke, founder and president of Javelin. "People are putting a lot of information out there without thinking about it," he says. "Nobody's going to say, 'bail out of social media,' but people need to be careful about what they're putting out there and how it correlates to what they give to banks."and "In addition to social media users, smartphone owners are seeing a higher rate of fraud than the general public. This fraud increase could possibly be connected to risky behavior on the consumer's part, according to the report, which reveals that 32 percent of smartphone owners do not update to a new operating system when it becomes available; 62 percent of them do not use a password on their home screen; and 32 percent of them save login information on their device."
This shows you the statistics of how people save their login data to their phones and do not update their operating systems to make their phones harder to be compromised. The article also goes on to talk about how many users are just downloading apps, and agreeing to the terms without reading what it allows the app to do in return. Many apps are not all they are advertised to be because of their policies. Many want full access to your contacts, twitter, facebook, etc. The problem with that is they may be able to obtain your passwords and such depending on what you agree to in the terms of service. It is very important to check and take precaution when downloading apps so that your information is not stolen. You need to make sure you 100% agree with the terms of service before just agreeing to something so that you can play a game, or make bank deposits with your phone.
After reading this article I have learned a lot about why it is important to keep up to date with your phone and make sure you are taking the proper precautions to avoid having fraud committed. No one wants to deal with fraud especially when it is over an issue that could be as easy as reading the terms of service for an app. It is important to take the proper precautions and make sure you know what you are doing before you make irrational decisions that could have long terms effects.
