File this one under security risk.
There has been an increase in users posting personal information in the forum. It is not against rules and not going to be policed, but we need to do our diligence to remind users of the risks.
If you share your address and phone number on a social networking site, you open yourself up to threats of identity theft and other personal dangers. Something as simple as a phone number is all that is needed in some cases. If you post that you're going on vacation and you have your address posted, then everyone knows you have an empty house. Identity thieves could pay a visit to your mailbox and open up a credit card in your name during the time that you are gone. Even just posting your phone number gives people with Internet savvy easy access to your address. Reverse lookup services can supply anyone with your home address if you can provide the phone number.
Web search engines and some other sites use Web crawling or spidering software to update their web content or indexes of others sites' web content. Web crawlers can copy all the pages they visit for later processing by a search engine that indexes the downloaded pages so that users can search them much more quickly.
I have personally seen what something as simple as a phone number or posted email address can uncover. Posting any personal contact is at your own risk, and please be weary of what you post when it comes to your names, locations and phone numbers.
There has been an increase in users posting personal information in the forum. It is not against rules and not going to be policed, but we need to do our diligence to remind users of the risks.
...THIS DOES HAPPEN...
If you share your address and phone number on a social networking site, you open yourself up to threats of identity theft and other personal dangers. Something as simple as a phone number is all that is needed in some cases. If you post that you're going on vacation and you have your address posted, then everyone knows you have an empty house. Identity thieves could pay a visit to your mailbox and open up a credit card in your name during the time that you are gone. Even just posting your phone number gives people with Internet savvy easy access to your address. Reverse lookup services can supply anyone with your home address if you can provide the phone number.
Web search engines and some other sites use Web crawling or spidering software to update their web content or indexes of others sites' web content. Web crawlers can copy all the pages they visit for later processing by a search engine that indexes the downloaded pages so that users can search them much more quickly.
I have personally seen what something as simple as a phone number or posted email address can uncover. Posting any personal contact is at your own risk, and please be weary of what you post when it comes to your names, locations and phone numbers.
