80% of Employees Overshare on Social Media, Increases Risk

The more personal information out on the web, the easier it is for hackers to gain access to not just your account, but your business accounts as well. Oversharing on social media exposes organizations to online fraud, phishing and other social engineering attacks.

In a study that polled 4,000 US and UK professionals, over half of respondents admitted they have public profiles on Facebook, with only one third having a private Instagram account. A majority of them (84%) post on social media weekly, with over two-fifths (42%) posting every day.

Bad actors can use this type of information against you. By friending or following you on social platforms, or just skimming through a public profile, it’s easy to imitate or impersonate someone online. A hacker could steal a profile photo, create an email address that is just a bit off (ex. johndoe@yahoo vs. johnd0e@yahoo) and wiggle their way into a company email thread.

According to a claim from the email vendor in this study, their analysis revealed that social engineering and wire fraud attacks both increased by 15% during the last six months of 2020, versus the previous six. Around 88% of people polled said they had received a suspicious email in 2020.

On social network sites, you might not think posting a photo of your family or recent job update would do much harm. But each individual snippet of information creates a larger picture of who you are, and makes an impersonator’s scam that much more believable.

Remember to maintain cybersecurity best practices by regularly updating passwords, clearing out old or irrelevant data from your accounts, and maintaining privacy on all social media platforms.