Hiding your tracks: how to prevent digital followers from collecting a file about you on social networks

We’ve been waiting faithfully for two years, and very soon, on February 10, we will finally premiere the fourth season of You, the in-house dramatic thriller based on the books by Caroline Kepnes. Penn Badgley played the main role in the project, and what we can say for sure (we apologize in advance for any possible spoilers) are the follower abilities of Dan Humphrey, who turned out to be the same “Gossip Girl”. The series of the same name has definitely reached a new level. And if you suddenly find yourself in Joe Goldberg moments, then we don’t have the best news for you.

In fact, in the 21st century, digital stalking has become the scourge of modern society – remember at least the jokes that any girl can learn from social networks, crash something that even operational services will not “scrape” on her. And jokes are jokes, but most of the time it’s true. Endless feeds, subscriptions, photo search, Telegram bots, and now your friend gets a complete dossier on the next table in the restaurant about the man whose name you first heard about five minutes ago. The second bad news in the last two minutes is that you can get the same thing 99% of the time. How do you protect yourself from the persecution of online abusers and what you need to know about digital hygiene? To understand! And there’s a reason – World Safe Internet Day.

What do attackers pay attention to if they want to hack your page on social networks?

During activity, when the user is most frequently online for hacking during their most inactive time. And also – to all the information that is open about him, in order to seem as believable as possible. For example, based on photos, you can identify and add friends to common “acquaintances” in subscriptions. Even photos from the last batch can be used “against” – for example, scammers can introduce themselves as a photographer and offer to see professional photos via the link. And by clicking on it you will lose all data.

What devices can followers use to retrieve personal data?

From any device with Internet access with the same data. But do not be afraid of this – unfortunately, your personal data has long been “leaked” thanks to hacked databases like Yandex. Food”, CDEK et al. Even public records are available in large numbers in gray markets and unfortunately nothing can be done about it.

What is the danger of posting private photos on social networks?

For some, the distribution and blackmail of such photos has already become a business. That is, attackers find girls on dating sites or social networks, take a photo, and then threaten to send them to friends and relatives of the victim. What can I say, if today it is possible to hack even cloud storage, as, for example, with Jennifer Lawrence (in 2014, nude photos of the actress were published on an anonymous forum). And in our practice there were cases when women, after a divorce from their husbands, came with a request to remove the “copied” spicy content on the Internet – yes, the ex-wives themselves leaked candid photos. So think twice before taking photos like this and think three times before sending them to someone.

Who is most at risk of data breach?

In fact, everyone who uses the internet. For example, most Russians have an account in the State Service, we use the websites of medical institutions or tax authorities. Any user is not exempt from the fact that the sites he is registered on cannot be hacked or compromised, even subject to all digital hygiene rules. In the 90s, it was possible to buy real calm bases at flea markets in all major cities – this is the fact that we have all been at risk for a long time. Don’t panic and don’t get into asceticism.

How to be “safe” on social media? Are there ground rules to avoid falling victim to cyber predators?

The best you can do is separate your personal accounts, keep them as private as possible, add no strangers, use complex passwords, and share as little of your personal information as possible. And for all the fun, create fake pages registered to “left” mail and use separate browsers for them. In fact, everything is simple: do not follow unfamiliar links, do not go to unfamiliar sites, do not upload downloads from external devices to devices.

What are the most common tracking methods? For example, drilling bots in Telegram, searching by photo, etc.

Currently, the most common search technology is OSINT (open source intelligence – open source intelligence) – an intelligence discipline that includes the search, selection and collection of intelligence information from public sources, as well as its analysis. And although currently large Telegram bots for information search provide the opportunity to block information about them, deleting it in one place does not mean deleting it from everywhere. Unfortunately, it is not possible to protect yourself 100%.

What data can you find out about a person by his photo, phone number, name?

Accounts in social networks, emails, full name, registration address, passport details, SNILS, TIN, cars registered to him, relatives and much more.

Is it possible to delete information about yourself on the web?

It is impossible to completely “exclude” yourself from the Internet, but quite a certain thing. You can clear a certain maximum of information, which will greatly complicate the data search.

To begin with, it is worth putting things in order on social networks, cleaning up old photos and posts, brands, subscriptions. Regular users of social networks quickly forget what they wrote about a year ago, who they mentioned in the pictures, which pages they followed, but all these are bits of data that together reveal a person’s identity. Remember: not everything you post on your pages on the web is “personal” anymore. Anything personal should be stored on digital or physical disks. Secondly, privacy settings need to be adjusted: remove the home address and geotags that might point to it from open data, make the personal account private, and leave only the right people in “friends”. Thirdly, it is worth buying a new SIM card to link important accounts. The main contact number should be “clean”. Fourth, you need to delete unused accounts: turn them off with internal settings or change the data so that the account does not redirect you.

How to act in case of blackmail by cyberstalkers?

Make a police report and ignore it. If you pay, the scammers will come again.