The popularity of social media makes people share more information about themselves. Facebook, Twitter and Google + are the places where we usually share our most private details, such as date of birth, workplace or home address. So people basically share all the information that makes others see exactly who the person is, what do they, where they live and what are their interests. We do everything that is possible to share our life events with our online friends, naively believing that our information stays within the service we are using.
The new era of social media has encouraged people to share private information with their online networks of friends. However, what happens in one’s social network, doesn’t usually stay there. There are many ways for outsiders to gather the information, which is then put to use.
You have to remember that you can never be sure that your details are safe on the internet. You may or might not have heard of the head-hunters, who often check job candidates using their Facebook profiles and based on the information available, they decide whether the person gets a job or not. This is not that bad, if you think of the situation where someone is going through your personal data, finds it interesting and simply steals it off you. The person then can use your data do commit crime, crime committed in your name.
We are the ones who make it easier by sharing our personal information everywhere where we possibly can. You should start protecting your data. You should check the security of the portal that you are using, and if the privacy policy is not satisfactory, only share the information that you need in order for your profile to function. And remember- your data is your personality. You can steal same as you would steal a wallet.