The Deputy General Manager at Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet), Carl Amanor Sackey, has warned against the incessant posting of family and other personal information on social media.
He noted that increasingly, people tend to share a lot of personal information on their social media platforms, making them susceptible to hackers and other criminal elements.
Speaking on MTN’s Bright Media Series conversation webinar on Cybersecurity as part of the Cyber Security Awareness Month, the IT Expert explained that criminals can for instance use pictures of individuals, their family members, children, loved ones, and places they have visited, to trace their activities and target them.
He added that publishing names of close family members and other personal details like dates of birth, anniversaries etc., serve as fodder for hackers who can gather this information and create profiles for the unsuspecting user.
This phenomenon, he says, primarily affects social media users who use the names and names of close relatives as passwords to their accounts.
Carl Sackey further posited that the information provided could be used to cause harm to the individual offline as well, in the form of kidnappings, robberies etc.
The IT Expert advised internet users to use password generators to create one concerning the safety of passwords.
He said it was not safe to use a single password for all of one’s accounts as that made it easy for them to be hacked.
According to him, the password generator would provide complex passwords for each account, ensuring their safety.
Carl Sackey recommended using the 1password app, which would help users generate and store passwords to their accounts.
He also advised saving passwords on browsers as they are easy to access.
