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4.4 Sharing Personal Information on the Internet

A Closer Look: Top Five Social Media Scams (Continued)

4. Phishing requests. “You have to see these
photos of you I found on social media!”
Many of us would be tempted to click
on the link in that message, which takes
you to what looks like your Facebook
or Twitter log-in page. There you enter
your log-in ID and password, and a
cybercriminal now has control of your
account. This type of scheme is known
as phishing (pronounced “fishing”).
Don’t fall for it. Make sure you have
installed Internet security software on
your computer that defends against this
type of attempt to gain your personal
information. We discuss such software
later in Module 6.
Trifonenko/iStock/Thinkstock
5. Hidden URLs. People would rather copy
As the name suggests, phishing
and paste a short URL than a long one,
requests try to get you to take the bait
and some social media sites such as
and hand over personal information.
Twitter limit the number of characters in
links you post in messages on the site. For
these reasons, online URL shortening services are popular today. These services allow
you to input a long URL and then convert it to a much shorter one. For example, the
URL to find San Diego, California, on Google Maps is http://www.google.com/maps
/place/San+Diego,+CA/@32.7421459,-117.1435718,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x80d
9530fad921e4b:0x0d3a21fdfd15df79. Using one of these services, the URL can be
shortened to http://bit.ly/1KHhoDZ.

In this example, the shortened URL eliminates all the information that helps you identify the
site. For this reason, shortened URLs can be used by scammers to redirect you to an unsafe
website. You can recognize shortened or hidden URLs by the name of the shorter service (bit.ly
in the previous example) or by the seemingly random mix of letters and numbers at the end.
Be careful of clicking on these URLs, unless you trust the sender. Twitter users post these links
frequently. Learn to recognize the parts of a URL shown earlier in this module and be aware
that you will not know the actual destination of a shortened URL.
In Module 6, we will discuss the importance of installing Internet security software on your
computer to guard against accidentally installing malware on your computer if you click on a
malicious shortened URL.
Reflection Questions

1. Have you encountered any of these online scams? How did you react?
2. After reading about common social media scams, will you change any of your online
behaviors? If so, which ones?

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