How Mother’s Day Facebook celebrations can lead to identity theft

A couple of weeks ago I explained why you shouldn’t reveal your Royal Wedding guest name. Now I have to warn you that celebrating Mother’s Day can lead to you giving away too much personal information about your children.

Here’s a message which has been passed around on Facebook for a few days:

In honor of Mother’s Day…If you are a proud mother re post with the name, birth date, & birth weight of your child/children!

See what they’ve done? They’ve told me the name of their children and their precise date of birth. And I’m not even friends with them, they’ve left their profiles open for the entire world to see because they haven’t followed best practice guidelines for Facebook privacy settings.

And – don’t forget – when you share a…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.