Social Media Effect

Yesterday was my Facebook birthday, my real birthday was sometime ago. Why would you do that? I was asked. Why have a different birthday on Facebook? Identity theft was my answer.

Identity theft is a growing problem and we all know it. We complain about the government sticking its nose in our private lives, yet we have no problem in neatly outline it on our social media profiles. We are  eager to share personal information, like our birthday, address, hometown, graduation dates and email address, together with our picture. For a thief any little morsel is helpful. What is your favorite movie? your dog's name and birthday? Could any of the above information be a password you use for a bank account? In 2013, 13.1 million people were victims of identity theft, every two seconds a new person falls in this trap.

A few months back, the email that was connected to my Facebook account was hacked. Later, my bank account was blocked for trying to access it with a wrong password to many time. But I didn't attempt to access my account with the wrong password, so who did? We decided to change the passwords for all of the important accounts after my husband's bank account was blocked for the same reason. This time we didn't use the obvious name and birthday combo or pet name; and that is when I tried to erase my birthday information from Facebook, unsuccessfully. It's like a hostage program you can't get out unless you close the account. Having family and friends around the world who post fun pictures of their families and adventures kept me from closing the account, so I changed the information.

Social media is a great way to connect and communicate with loved ones, or to create a professional profile that allows you to develop followers, which is the reason why I use Twitter and Instagram. But, perhaps we step back for a minute to analyze what type of information we are sharing that could get us in trouble.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, I missed them on my real birthday!