It's Super Easy to Find Your Home Address and Cell Phone Number The Human Element

Ep 11: It’s Super Easy to Find Your Home Address and Cell Phone Number

In this episode, we talk about just how quickly and easily someone can uncover your personal information such as your home address and cell phone number. This is certainly not newsworthy information as it has been possible to do this for years but the number of people who are scammed, stalked, or otherwise because they do not know what information of theirs is easily accessible is alarming.

This information could easily be crafted in an attack to gain access to bank accounts, retirement accounts, home titles, identity, and business networks. At this point, it’s unrealistic to believe that some of your data is not publicly available but there are ways to protect yourself from an attack.

To illustrate this again I performed the same type of research on another recent college graduate who did not believe I could find his cell phone number. This one was a little more challenging because the number was actually in his father’s name but he was shocked when I called him and told him what else I uncovered, in less than an hour.

This type of information gathering is almost always the precursor to a social engineering attack. Attackers will gather as much information as possible before trying to socially engineer you. The more they know the easier it is to be convincing. That’s why you need to be prepared.

Transcription

0:00

People are the weakest link in any cybersecurity plan. We’re distracted, exhausted and often unmotivated. It’s time to change the approach used to protect our businesses, technology, identity and data. The human element has to be front and center in a war against data breaches and ransomware attacks. It’s time to educate.

0:52

Welcome to the human element podcast, visit our website at the human element dotnet for more content to help you strengthen your awareness of the people problem in cybersecurity. I am Scott Gombar. Owner and Washtech a client focused security minded proactive IT service provider. Welcome to Episode 11. This is the real episode 11. I am Scott Gombar, your host. And the last episode I uploaded was episode 10. Even though in the podcast I said episode 11. It is not episode 11. This is episode 11. We’re going to do a little bit differently this week. And I think maybe the next couple of weeks it’s it’s going to be storytime. So this week, I’m going to talk about a scenario and I’m going to leave names out for obvious reasons you’ll you’ll understand soon. I was at a sporting event for my one of my children. And over here a few of the moms discussing someone who borderline stalking I guess. And that person pops up on the internet, wherever they are, they’re able to communicate with them despite being blocked. They pop up in physical locations that they attend. So let’s say the mom attends a parent teacher conference. Somehow this this person shows up there as well. They do random text messages, Facebook messages, LinkedIn messages, all of the different platforms, all the different ways of communicating. I don’t I don’t recall hearing WhatsApp, but I suppose it’s a possibility WhatsApp messages, which we’ll have another podcast about in the future because I have started receiving a lot of WhatsApp messages out of the blue. From people I don’t know, they’re obviously scams. But I think that’s where a lot of romance scams are taking place now. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna go over one of those in a future episode. So I overhear this conversation going on between a few moms. And I interject, and I say, you know, is there something I could do to help? Now at this point, the moms don’t they don’t really know who I am, what I do. So I, you know, introduce myself and tell them that my primary business is it. However,