Monday, January 29, 2018

Are Your Trackers and Social Media Accounts Blasting Your Personal Info Everywhere?

Most people are tech savvy enough these days that they are (hopefully) a bit more careful about posting things like their vacation plans on Facebook so that the public won't know when they are out of town thus making their home a prime target for burglars.

A recent bit of hoopla, however, has pointed out that while most people are careful with Facebook (and the military is pretty relentless about their constant messages for their members to be careful about what they post on social media) there are other ways that military members are being "outed" by their technology.  What everyone apparently missed is that health tracking apps like Strava can give away your information (both location as well as your name) which has caused a big issue when military member Joe Blow is suddenly posting his daily runs--in the middle of the desert in Iraq.  Oops.

This is a good reminder that you need to be careful about ALL of your tech and how it both tracks you as well as allows you to post a lot of personal information online where it could be accessed by anyone.  Someone who is being stalked wouldn't want to let their stalker know that they run the same route everyday at the same time a la Map My Run or Strava.  Someone who is involved in criminal activity is often given away by the tower pings of their cell phone.  In the future, all of your check ins at restaurants on a daily basis could give your health insurance provider cause to drop you (I'm only guessing at this but it is a possibility).  If your family runs toward the criminal side, know that those fancy genealogy DNA tests are being used by law enforcement to find criminals by comparing their DNA to known persons in genealogy DNA registries.  Finally, the last season TV show called "The Hunted" showed how easily trained investigators used all things tech (license plate tracking, social media links, etc) to easily find most of the competitors on the show.

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