PrivacySharing Personal Information on Social Media Is Risky

Published 21 May 2020

An innocent, seemingly fun and engaging social media trend has been popping up on news feeds. In an act of solidarity with high school seniors who were finishing out their final semester at home due to the coronavirus stay-at-home order, Facebook users were sharing their own senior class photos in nostalgic posts. While it is a nice sentiment and the presence of cameras in nearly every cellphone has made it easy to take and exchange pictures, there are certain security considerations one should keep in mind.

An innocent, seemingly fun and engaging social media trend has been popping up on news feeds. In an act of solidarity with high school seniors who were finishing out their final semester at home due to the coronavirus stay-at-home order, Facebook users were sharing their own senior class photos in nostalgic posts.

While it is a nice sentiment and the presence of cameras in nearly every cellphone has made it easy to take and exchange pictures, there are certain considerations one should keep in mind, according to Joseph Turow, the Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication.

“It is a part of life today,” he says. “Phones with cameras make it very easy and alluring to share photos, and it is understandable people want to share. It is also difficult to argue that every posted photo is going to lead to a scam or be hacked.”

Turow, who has authored 11 books, edited five, and written more than 150 articles on mass media industries, says the technology of hacking is continuously evolving. So, we don’t know what will happen in the future in terms of how scammers will use information.

“The more photos reflect the context of a person and their relationships with others, the more that person can be denoted by their location which in turns allows hackers greater access to personal information,” he says.

Turow urges participants to beware, because these kinds of posts can make users more susceptible to hackers trying to break into online accounts.

“The problem is that there are so many photos of people,” he says. “There is a possibility that someone will attach a name to your photo. If you appear in a photo of friends who also have been tagged, people with malign intent can try to trace these relationships and use them to fool people into giving up information. It is amazing how much stuff is out there about everyone, and what people share about themselves, often without being aware they’re doing it.”

UPenne notes that when sharing these photos, users posted them with the hashtag #ClassOf020. Scammers can quickly scan sites for this hashtag and possibly find the name of your high school and your graduation year.

These are the two most common online security questions, and if your social media account isn’t protected, scammers can find out a lot more about you, according to Turow. Also, a high school graduate year also implies a person’s age and, often, the age of friends in the photos.

“Hackers looking to break into your private accounts could use any piece of information you share in a viral challenge,” Turow says. Year of graduation, cities in which you’ve lived and the makes and models of all the cars you’ve owned are examples; those cars, cities, and graduation years may show up in photos you share. (Often photos contain side information about date and location.) This can be used to infer other revealing details, such as your date of birth and the city you grew up in—also popular security questions to bank accounts and retirement funds.

“Criminals can try to use this information to get more information from you that will then allow them to target you for money out of some online accounts,” Turow says. “Hackers are continuously looking for ways to get into people’s files to find out ways to get into their monetary accounts and take on some aspects of one’s identity in some type of way.”

In addition, he says people “use these details to hack social media accounts, guess security questions on financial sites, and send customized ‘spear phishing’ messages designed to fool you into forking over sensitive information.”

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) cited similar concerns about other recent trends involving personal information on social media, including posting about the make and model years of all vehicles you’ve ever owned, your favorite athletes, and your favorite shows.