So apparently there’s something which I should have included in the book but didn’t because I figured it was so obvious that it didn’t require actually saying. Do NOT take pictures of your credit cards and post them online. I mean really, why on earth would you think that it’s a good idea to post all the information that people need to steal your identity? Below is a screenshot of just a couple of pictures that people have posted on Twitter about their new credit cards that they just got.
Apparently this problem is so common that someone has actually made a twitter account that retweets these peoples pictures. The bio for this twitter account simply reads “Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people”. The sad thing is that most of the pictures that this account has retweeted are still out there on twitter. My favorite is the one in the picture that actually includes the security code from the back of the card (which is conveniently his (Fred’s) birthday). Give that he’s in his early 20’s that narrows down the year of his birth to just a few options in the mid 1990s so he’s just given out basically everything needed to take over his PayPal account and card.
I’m guessing that when there’s fraud on these cards the people that post these pictures are shocked that all their money has been stolen.
So apparently rule #1 of data privacy, don’t take a picture of your credit cards and post them online has to actually be written down.
Hopefully these people will quickly figure out that this is a bad plan and remove the pictures and never do something so stupid again. Based on their pictures on twitter they all appear to be younger folks in their early 20’s. Now I remember back to my early 20’s and I was pretty stupid but I can’t imagine that I would have ever freely given my credit card number to what amounts to basically every person on the planet. Those 16 little numbers are magic in that they give someone your money. Keep them to yourselves.
Denny
P.S. Yes I realize that I haven’t blocked out the card numbers in the screenshot. I’m working under the assumption that the cards are already canceled as the accounts have been drained by now.
http://basicsofdigitalprivacy.com