In the recent past , I have seen a good number of my friends’ Facebook timelines polluted by pornographic material, but when when I tried to imagine and compare the person that I know and what I was seeing on their wall, something wasn’t just adding up. If you happened to be known as the “good one”, you would escape the internet backlash from your faithful friends.

And yes, it happened to me too. I came to realize that I had clicked a link that would post on my friends’ timelines about how I had dropped weight and that they should try it too.

You wonder how this happened? Sometimes it might be just an error you made in clicking a wrong link .But now it has emerged that giving too much information about yourself gives cybercriminals an easy time hacking through your account.

Cybercrime is a fast-growing area of crime. More and more criminals are exploiting the speed, convenience and anonymity of the Internet to commit a diverse range of criminal activities that know no borders, either physical or virtual, cause serious harm and pose very real threats to victims worldwide

Almost a third of internet users admitted to sharing their personal details on social networking sites (SNS) that left them vulnerable to attacks by cyber criminals. Posts and check-ins by these users are often shared with all users instead of with a limited circle of friends.

Many users believe any information they put on these platforms could be accessed by people not on their friends list.

In the past, cybercrime was committed mainly by individuals or small groups. Today, we are seeing highly complex cybercriminal networks bring together individuals from across the globe in real time to commit crimes on an unprecedented scale.

This was found in an online survey conducted recently by cyber security giant Kaspersky Lab to assess the cyber savviness of internet users across the globe. Conducted among people over 18 years of age from 16 countries.

“In the survey, 12% people admitted to befriending anybody who sent them a request irrespective of whether they knew them in real life. To ensure your social network sharing doesn’t leave you exposed to danger, one needs to be cautious about whom they befriend and trust on these sites as all might not be as they seem,”

At least 26% of the users said they didn’t hesitate to click on a link sent by a friend without asking what it was, or considering the possibility that the sender’s account had been hacked.

The golden rule the experts swear by is ‘When in doubt, don’t accept a friend request or click on a link you are not expecting’. If this is not followed, the information on one’s social profiles can easily be accessed by cybercriminals for phishing and identity theft.

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