Harvesting Birthdays

When participating in social media, there are all sorts of fun things to be part of, like “Who would be in your Zombie Apocalypse team?”.
Though it’s fun, it’s also easy to give up your personal information. Why the heck would a game choose to use your birthday? Probably to harvest more details about you if you locked your profile down and don’t have your birthday showing.

Just Another Social Engineering Tactic

Just knowing someone’s birthday isn’t too crazy, but some people are about privacy; also, someone harvesting has most likely more fun games for you too fill out based on your name, year you were born, where you live, how much you make, etc… That data gets kept and correlated with other information that they have on you.

It can be EXTREMELY likely that a database with your debit/credit has been compromised and now they are correlating that data with new information to sell. According to this post (20 Bucks Buys You 1,000 Node Bot Army), they get potentially 6 times the amount of money if they include FULLZ (your full information).

Why do I say it is EXTREMELY likely that a database with your debit/credit numbers has been compromised? The Wall Street Journal reports 45% of all households have received a breach notification. That is 9 in every 20 people it might as well be 50%. If you are in a room with another person most likely, one of you two has received a breach notification letter.

Do you know people who actively participate in a bunch of these games? Share this with them! Let’s make the Internet more secure!