How to Stay Safe On Facebook

THIS ARE SOME PRECAUTIONS YOU NEED TO TAKE TO STAY PRIVATE AND SAFE:)

Make friend lists

Categorise your “friends” into various groups according to what information you want them to have access to, from “Work Friends” (minimal access) to “Acquaintances”, “Family” and “Close Friends” (full access).

Restrict access to profile

To prevent strangers from accessing your page, it is advisable to allow “Only Friends” to access your profile.

Remove your address and phone number

This may be useful information for your real friends and family but imagine what will happen if the information falls into the wrong hands.

Remove your full birthdate from your profile

dentity thieves can use it to obtain more information on you and even gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you want to remind your friends about your birthday, remove the year.

Be careful when registering for new applications

It is all fun and exciting to try out new games and quizzes but what many don’t realise is that you may unknowingly be sharing all your information with the developers who can then sell your data or spam you.Go to “Privacy Settings” and tick “Applications”, followed by “Settings”. Uncheck the boxes for the personal information that you do not want them to obtain.

Facebook Addresses Several Privacy Problems

Facebook has come under under fire recently for its recent string of privacy-unfriendly practices, from its “privacy transition” that took away privacy controls to “instant personalization” that instantly shares personal information with third party pages without the user's consent.

Problem #1: Giving Users Control Over All Information They Share Via Facebook

Users share a wide range of information via Facebook: friends lists, photos, education and work history, religious and political leanings, relationship status—the whos, whats, whens, hows, and whys of their lives

What Changed Today:
For profile information, you can now use a single click to change all of their settings to “Everyone,” “Friends of Friends,” “Friends Only,” or Facebook's “Recommended” settings. You can also still fine-tune your own settings. Having controls that are actually easy to use—even for unsophisticated users—is a significant improvement.

Problem #2: Sharing Information With Third Parties Without Users’ Opt-In Consent

Third party applications and websites have access to a huge amount of information about individuals .Facebook has increased the amount of information these apps and pages can access and taken away some of the few controls users had to prevent this access. And Facebook recently took this one step further with "instant personalization," allowing some websites to access Facebook user information without giving notice to the user first

What Changed Today:
Facebook addressed third party sharing in two ways. First, it made it easier for users to opt out of “instant personalization” entirely by providing a single privacy control to disable instant personalization via friends as well as directly. Second, Facebook has restored the option to opt out of third party sharing entirely.

6 preventive measures for privacy invasion

1.Run a credit report on yourself to see if there are any unknown credit inquiries or unauthorised accounts.

2.Reconcile your cheque and credit card statements in a timely fashion and challenge any purchases that you did not make.

3.Limit the number of credit cards you have to reduce exposure, and cancel any inactive accounts.

4.Destroy all unused pre-approved credit card and loan applications. The mailbox thief only has to fill them out and redirect the return address to start using your credit.

5.Never give any important number out like from your credit card, bank account, date of birth, or NRIC number to anyone you don’t know over the telephone.

6.Don't give away too much personal information on your personal web site. Full names, date of births and address is too much information to post. By obtaining your "place-of-birth," the identity thief can possibly get your duplicate birth certificate.

IDENTITY THEFT

Identity theft can take many forms. An illegal immigrant may use you NRIC number and date of birth for employment purposes or to obtain a birth certificate. Imagine the confusion that can be created when the IRS wants to know why you did not declare the extra income reported to them from someone using your name and NRIC number.

Most often, an identity thief will obtain your personal identification numbers from the trash and obtain credit in your name by having credit cards, goods or services delivered to their address or mail drop. Since the bills for the charges incurred with be sent to the thief's address, not yours, you will be unaware that debt is mounting up in your name until the collections department tracks you down. By then your credit report will already be riddled with late payment histories and show many accounts in collections. As you can imagine, the credit reporting bureaus will be reluctant to change negative credit without proof that you had not created the bad credit.

Identity theft can significantly traumatise anyone because it is unnerving to know (or not know) the extent of the damage to your name, credit or reputation. There have been cases reported where victims took many years to restore their credit and good names, and had problems cashing cheques, obtaining loans or even renting apartments.

Poor privacy protection in Malaysia

Malaysia scored miserably in the international ranking on privacy for 2007 mainly due to the continued use of the Internal Security Act which allows for police search and seizure of evidence without a warrant, the installation of closed-circuit television (CCTV) and the use of biometrics to monitor immigrants in an environment where privacy laws and data protection do not exist.

Malaysia’s poor record in privacy protection was said to be because of the absence of right to privacy in the constitution and other laws. Instead, there is interception authorised by the attorney general, the use of identification schemes (Mykad and the biometric), and the installation of CCTVs with no privacy safeguards. The report also said there is a “plan to implement a citizen data hub across government departments to keep information on individuals’ backgrounds, education, and health records.”

The Mykad has the capacity of holding personal details and banking information and private mobile numbers are easily obtained by sales people of any service or product without prior approval of the individual. Loan applicants are subject to a credit worthiness check supplied by a private company that could potentially blacklist individuals, also without their knowledge

On the one hand, individual information is not protected and can be use virtually by anyone for any purpose, but the authorities protect public interest information such as development deals, concessionaire agreements and consultancy agreements secret under the Official Secrets Act,

Have you ever wondered which countries face the most cybercrime?

http://www.enigmasoftware.com/top-20-countries-the-most-cybercrime/

WANA GET RICH......THIS WAY

In most cases, victims of unauthorized withdrawals had received an unidentified (SMS) Short Messaging System (from fraudster) to inform them that they have won a cash prize. I would believe that most of us would feel excited to receive such an announcement even though it’s fake. Who doesn’t want easy money?

• To claim the promised cash prize, the victim is to open an internet banking account. I can bet, there’s still a lot of people who doesn’t know what is internet banking!

• The victim then contacts the fraudster and the fraudster will provide a step-by-step guide on how to register and activate their internet banking account using the ATM terminal.

• At point of registration at the ATM terminal, the victim will be given an internet banking personal identification number (PIN). The fraudster will ask the victim for this PIN and use it to create an internet banking account for the victim.

• The fraudster will then ask the victim to register the fraudster’s mobile phone number in order to obtain an Authorization Code to enable transfer of funds via internet banking.

This will result in the Authorization Code being sent via SMS directly to the fraudster’s mobile phone. The victim has now unknowingly provided the fraudster with full access to their banking account.

ATM GET RICH SCAMSSSSS

Well, to some people (including myself) the information seemed too simple that nobody cares about it. Thus, the number of fraud cases involving ATM are increasing each day.

Based on investigations, all of these cases were due to customers knowingly or unknowingly divulging their personal information such as personal identification numbers (PIN) and passwords to fraudulent parties. The transactions involved were genuine, using complainants’ account information and followed the required process. CCTV recordings had captured the complainants activating access to Internet banking at ATMs. Most complainants were not Internet savvy and failed to understand that their own actions had led to the fraudulent withdrawal of funds from their accounts.

In order to prepare and avoid ourselves from being scammed, it is better to know and understand the modus operandi.

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