The Bad People Lurking on Twitter and Facebook

Dean posted a good article on Twitter security today. Way to go Dean.

Twitter is not safe. Far from it. Too many of us like Facebook and Twitter. But less than 90% of us truly understand the grave risks that using these tools presents to your becoming just another victim of identity theft. 

Twitter uses Cloud-based technology. Which essentially collects clusters of excess space (hard drive space) from lots of pools of other computers and there isn't much bullet proof security you can apply to that technology. It's hacked all the time. 

Do the math. How many times has Twitter been hacked this year alone? Click the link on the left here and see for yourself. So you think Twitter is safe, eh? I rest my case. 

The other problem is the sheer number of time wasting, ID stealing applications on Facebook.

Your friend pokes you, another sends you flip flops.

A friend sends you a Heart or invites you to a pillow fight.

Another wants to hug you or challenge you to Mafia Wars.  

Every time you accept one of these stupid applications on FaceBook or allow yourself to have your Twitter accessed by a third party program... do you really know how well they built their software?  No, you don't. It seems innocent af first and many of give it no real thought. Just click the OK button. Now you have a pillow fight. You get a stupid pair of colored flip flops.

Am I the only person who questions WHY I'm allowing my personal information and and birth date to some company I never heard of? And to make matters worse, you jsut let them have access to your friends information, emails and addresses and birthdays, too. 

Wow. What a nice friend you are. Now you not only did you put yourself directly into harm's way, you just screwed your friends and colleagues by placing them at risk, too.

Do you have any clue if their coding is WC3 os ISO compliant? Nope. And yet thousands of us blindly trust them with our personal information. Fine. I have a lot of beach front real estate I want to sell you in Nevada. 

Once your IDENTITY has been stolen like mine was, you get really cautions of this crap. Because the bad people are out there. They know how to scrape your information and eventually steal your life, credit cards and your online credit reports. My nightmare is far from over. I had FICO scores of 820. Used to. Now my scores on two of the bureaus are 710 and my Equifax is 610 and they reported only 9 months of credit, a new name and I was born in the 1980's instead of the late 1960's.

I've called and begged Equifax to restore my twenty year record of GOOD credit by sending them copies of my TransUnion and Experian reports. They cleaned up my credit, but they posted the WRONG birthday for me and only 9 months of credit.  I'm screwed for five years now as my score will never get up much more from 610 to 640 by the end of the year. It shows I'm too young and don;'t have enough credit history. So what do I do? I can certainly get my attorneys to sue the morons at Equifax.

I end up talking to some nice Indian woman overseas every time I call and ask for a manager. I've jokingly asked to speak to Suze Orman. The woman from India is so polite and replies,  "I'm sorry sir, Ms. Orman is just our national spokesperson." Fine, can I borrow her FICO Scores while you fix the mess you did to my financial life? I can't qualify now for that jumbo loan I want in Colorado Springs and you guys are holding me hostage to a report that reads I'm 25 years old and been working for 9 months. I'm 45! Did you not get the certified copies of my TransUnion and Experian reports?  "Yes sir we did, but we cannot change your information we have on file."

Now I know why they use these people in India. You can't tell them off and use some really colorful language. They are so sweet and nice and polite. I just don't have the ability to curse them. 

Did you know that there are right now, more than 202,913 gangs out there and more than 11.3 million people in the United States that can tap into your conversations and listen in with you and your conversations with Equifax, TransUnion or Experian? This is no BS. This is the one smoking gun that screams for secure communications when you are transmitting your SSAN over the web or a telephone.  

I used to work in military intelligence. I used to tap into your phone lines. I was the breathing voice you heard on the other end of the line. It's called the Patriot Act and the military can do a lot of thigns that you are not going to happy to learn about. Your private conversations, your emails. We know what's in there. The problem with the military and government is, as we tap into this information and we send copies of this back to the NSA and CIA (computers), your personal data is once again at risk as it is being transmitted so the bad guys out there with the same equipment we have, can siphon off the information, too. 

 Any idiot with $140 bucks can buy themselves an operators handset which can tap into any twisted pair phone line. It's a problem in New York and many cities with large under ground sewers where the phone company runs millions of miles of copper and fiber optic cables. You pop open any manhole cover, you drop in or you just open up any one of thousands of phone junction boxes attached to your local shopping mall. Hacking into any existing phone line is child's play.  

You have no clue who is listening in on your call as you cheerfully blab your SSAN, personal information, last two addresses over the phone.

Your risk of getting nailed by some punk in a gang copying down your information is now one out of fifteen.  Envelopes you send to Equifax, TransUnion or Experian can be opened. Information is copied and sold to the gangs then steamed shut or taped shut and you'll never know about it. The safest thing you can do to fix your credit is to never check it online. Never talk to a credit bureau over the phone. You set up an appointment with the local office and you go there in person.

Credit Card cartels and gangs have infiltrated our postal system, and in my case, they worked part time at some of the more classy restaurants posing as cheerful waiters and waitresses. Restaurants today, represent more than 33% of all identity thefts in America and this is on the rise. 

I was robbed blind by a young woman posing as a UNM student at an upscale restaurant who after we had several drinks, just asked what we did.  She takes our company credit card back to a place where we cannot see her and puts two and two together. She logs into a browser, finds our company address, assumes that is where the company card goes to and she scribbles down the Visa #, expiration and the 3 digits on the back of the card. I had no clue.

A week later she quits her job, and takes my Visa with a $25,000 limit and starts her spending spree as she drives to Oakland, CA. She opens up credit posing as my wife and the rest is just to painful to tell you the rest of the facts. All I can say is her ass is tucked away in a Women's prison in California and her parole hearing is in 2016. I plan to be there in person to tell the parol board she needs to stay another 50 years for screwing up my life. 

Sorry for the long post here, but you need to PRACTICE some SAFE ID stuff here if you are going to use Facebook or Twitter.

Here's my rules for staying out of trouble.

1.) Never post your REAL birthdate. Bump it up a few years. Change the day and month, too. Bad guys with wrong information can't steal your ID.

2.) IS your real name Bart on your birth certificate? Online, you post it's Bartholomew. Or Bartley. Again, bad guys with wrong info can't steal your ID.

3.) The stupid programs on Facebook - Forget Them. If you're a teenager, have fun. If you're a REALTOR, knock off the game playing and go sell some homes. Every time you accept a 3rd party program, you are placing your ID and personal information at risk including your friends and family you have saved in your Twitter account. According to NAR's homebuyer's report they published last year, they did not report one single instance of any REALTOR playing Mafia Wars that resulted in a home sale. 

4.) Firms are firing employees for screwing off online. Kodak just did it. I used to work there in the 1990's. A friend of mine who is still there said that Kodak HR just marched three employees to the door for playing Mafia Wars on company time.  

A Coldwell Banker office is about to implement the same strict policy for their marketing staff. No screwing off on social media networks on company time.