Partly to blame is our love of sharing details of our personal and professional lives online. This can reveal intimate details of ourselves that cybercriminals would struggle to find elsewhere. Such details include our location, date of birth, occupation, place of work, hobbies and even where we’re going on holiday.
In Mimecast’s State of Email Security 2022 report, more than eight out of 10 South African respondents said they believed their company was at risk due to inadvertent data leaks by careless or negligent employees.The trend of parents sharing photos and other details about their children online — colloquially known as “sharenting” — is of particular concern.
Or if a parent posts a picture of their “take your child to work day”, anyone watching would suddenly have multiple data points about that parent that could be weaponised by threat actors to improve their attack methods. One of the great dangers of sharing information online is that, once something exists in digital format, it “lives forever” and is largely out of one’s control. This makes it more likely that, at some point, the information will fall into the wrong hands.
People should, therefore, take extra care before posting anything to social media. Critically, parents and internet users generally should: