Please check out this post, keeping-your-phone-secure.
What is even “Opsec”?
Opsec, or operational security, aims to protect your personal and family information from being misused. Details from social media or other sources can be collected and used to target you in social engineering attacks or even help criminals plan crimes.
First Day Back To School
As students return to school this year, a new law requires all internet-connected devices to be put away in special bags for the entire school day. This change impacts how students use and share information at school. This will limit the data from school that could expose students. Like on Instagram you can search for posts based on a geolocation. Hackers could search for the address of the school and now they have a list of accounts that attend that school. But with the new law, this limit this issue. While still an issue because it can still be done after or before school.
Posting First Day Back Pictures to Social Media
Sharing back-to-school pictures on social media is common, but can unintentionally reveal details about your students or family.
On FaceBook you can make a custom list, after creating the custom list with trusted friends and family, you can post the back-to-school photos and set the post to only be accessible to those who are on the custom list, like your family or close friends.
First, be careful of the background of the images; make sure you are not in front of your house number or street sign. It might even be a good idea to take the pictures not even in front of your house. This means to also not take pictures in front of the school the students are attending.
Next, make sure that the board or piece of paper does not expose too much information about your wonderful students. Like the grade they are attending, the teacher’s name. Also, taking a picture in front of the bus the kids are taking is great, but now everyone on the internet knows the bus number your student takes. Someone could use this information to stalk your children or follow the bus to your house.
New Car or License?
When a teenager gets their first car, it is a big milestone that should be shared. It’s a fresh breath of freedom, but you should also remember to limit the information about the car when posting publicly. For example, you should blur out the licence plate, not take the picture in front of your house. Also maybe after a year or so you take down the post showing your first car. Because the model of your first car is usually an option for security questions used on banking or other important sites.
Another thing to add is that getting your license is also a big step; it might be tempting to post a picture of your license once you pass the driving test. I know I posted it! This might come as common sense, but you should blur as much as possible. Even if you create a special group that will only allow for family and friends to see it, you should blur out any information.
Bumper Stickers
Bumper stickers are a great way to express yourself, but it can also expose your information to strangers.
The diagram shows that the stickers on a car can expose information about you.
Like the image shows, information on your car could give hackers information they could use to hack you. A study in 2022 found that 39% of people use passwords that include the name of their pets. If you are going to use your pet’s name in the password, try generating a random sentence that includes the pet’s name. Something that cannot easily be guessed. This will make it much harder to guess or crack.
Being self-aware when taking selfies or pictures
When taking a picture or selfie in any setting, be aware of your surroundings, and make sure that your work or school badge is not shown. This information could be used to target you or your kids or it could be used to target the school or work place. Now, a threat actor knows what the badges look like. They could easily create their own badge.
Also, when taking a mirror selfie, be aware if your credit or debit cards are in the pouch in the back of your phone case. Someone could guess which bank you use and then try to target you personally to get your banking information.
As mentioned before, do not take a selfie or picture where your house number is visible. Make sure you clean any meta data from the image, not every site will remove metadata but popular social media sites like FaceBook and Twitter will remove the data for you.
Social Media
Limit the information you post on your profile settings, like making sure you hide your birthdate, do not put what school you go to. If you do want to put what school your attend, make it so only friends can see the post.
On Facebook, be careful what you post on in groups, even if it’s a local community group. Everyone can see what you post.
Also, do not answer those questions on Facebook that try to grab your personal information, like the posts that say if you are born in the month of July, you are red. Then say that your birthday date is a knight. This can expose your personal information to scammers or even to companies that are trying to build a profile about you.
Also, make sure you check your login history to see if there are any irregular logins or posts. Maybe once a year go over your profile on each social media accounts and make sure you have the most privacy centered settings enabled. Also enable two factor authentication to your socials. Two factor authentication means that you need TWO ways to identify yourself, a password and maybe an email is not enough. This means you will need to enter the correct username and password and also enter a code that was sent to your email.