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Identity Thieves: All They Need Is Birthday, Name, Address
Pentagon cyber-security expert warns, ‘Someone is lying to you’
WND
Russian hackers recently stole 1.2 billion Internet passwords and alarmed millions of people around the world, but one of the Pentagon’s top cyber-security experts warns there are far more sinister online threats and Americans may be leaving themselves and their families vulnerable through their Web activities.
Whether it’s an effort to gain access to bank accounts, steal identities or lure them into divulging volumes of personal information, criminals are looking to exploit Americans at every turn in a practice known as “catfishing.” But what is it?
“What it essentially means is someone is lying to you in the online domain, whether it’s something innocuous like adding a couple of inches to their height or taking away a few pounds from their weight or whether it’s something much more insidious by someone lying to you about who they are, whether it’s a predator or someone trying to lie to you to get information to steal your identity,” Tyler Cohen Wood said.
Wood is a cyber branch chief at the Defense Intelligence Agency. She is also author of “Catching the Catfishers: Disarm the Online Pretenders, Predators, and Perpetrators Who Are Out to Ruin Your Life.” She said there several things that should give people pause about their online connections.
“Some of the red flags are simple things like: If this person you’re talking to won’t Skype with you or have a video conversation, that’s a red flag,” Wood said. “If someone will not send you a photograph in real time, that’s a red flag, too. That could indicate they took a photograph from someone else’s site.”
She added, “I also recommend, if they do send you a photograph and it’s just one photograph, that you do a Google image search so you can determine if that photograph appears on someone else’s Facebook [page] or any other of their social media.”
Reposted with permission
