Oversharing Holiday Cheer on Social Media: Don't Ignore The Risks

Holiday Season is Party Season!

The holidays are a great time to share your cheer with friends and family on your social media accounts. Posting pictures of the family is a great way to keep Auntie Mary caught up with the family's activities. However, posting too much information is not always the best thing to do. What feels like harmless sharing can expose sensitive information about you and your family to criminals. Being cautious about holiday scams and online shopping scams is not enough to keep you safe online. You should also be careful about the details you post about your activities. Here are a few reasons why...

Sharing private information can lead to identity theft. Of course you love your cat Spot, and share cute photos of Spot hanging out with the family and doing tricks with your children. Details like a full name, pet's name, birthdate, location, or other personal identifying information can make it much easier for criminals to impersonate you, answer security questions, discover your passwords (if they are not strong and unique), or potentially open fake accounts. It can also give scammers information they can use to create convincing phishing email messages. To stay safe, you should not post personal details on social media. You should also make your profile private, so only your known friends can view your posts (although that might not be enough, as their accounts could also become compromised).

It is ok to post about my children, right? Actually, posting anything about your children can be dangerous for many reasons. Imposters can build a complete profile about your child, including their favorite pet or most enjoyable activities, and turn that into identity theft. Worse, that identity theft might go unnoticed for a long time, since nobody is really looking out for suspicious activity with their identity or checking their credit reports until they become an adult. If fact, 2% of children are victims of identity theft each year, with over 1.25 million cases reported in 2021 according to Experian. There are many horrifying stories about parents posting what they think is trivial information about their child, only to discover that their posts were used as the basis for their child's identity theft, or to identify the child based on social media posts with potentially nefarious intentions. Parents should also coach their children about the harms of oversharing, and to limit social media posting of personal details.

Are you currently on vacation? Posting about your vacation while you are away can easily alert potential burglars that you are not at home, or allow criminals to create very convincing scams similar to the Grandparent Scam, in which they reach out to your friends, claim that you lost your wallet on vacation and need immediate assistance to be able to come home. To minimize the risk, you really should wait until you get home to post about your vacation. You should also disable geotagging so that your photos do not contain information about where the photo was taken.

Wasn't that a great party? Remember that what you post on the internet NEVER GOES AWAY. Once it is out there, it will always be out there, even if you delete it later on. Pictures of you doing keg stands at the holiday party? Yup, your future employer might see that and and have second thoughts about hiring you. As many public figures have learned, posts taken out of context can impact your reputation, or come back to haunt them later in life. And, you might not be able to control what gets out there if your activities are posted or shared by your friends. You should really think before you post anything that you might not want to see on the front page of a magazine.

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Wait to post, don't post details, and think before you post!

Social Media is a great way to keep in touch with friends and family, but like most things should be done in moderation, and with thought. You can minimize your risk by following internet safety best practices, including monitoring your credit reports for any unusual activity, keeping strong, unique passwords on any online accounts you have, enabling two factor authentication, and keeping the personal details out of your posts.

Learn how you can protect yourself or your family by enrolling in the Complete Internet Security Basics and Phishing Awareness Course for Parents on TrainMyParent.com

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