On-Line Social Engineering

Should you find yourself a victim of couch-bound cyberstalking, don't forget about your on-line presence!  You have your Twitter, you have your Facebook, your LinkedIn, your Google Plus persona's and those will be valid targets as well.  The more brazen (AKA dumb) perpetrators will do silly stuff like try and friend you under their own names.  Those are easy to cull.  The more conniving individuals will create fake persona's, look through friends of friends and try and lure you in via familiarity with others.  They will befriend your real friends using some viable cover and then once they have enough "mutual" friends, they will then target you.  Shows like "Catfish" - while outing dating impersonations - also show those with nefarious intentions how to get around being quickly outed.  An unknown person attempting to friend you but with very few existing "friends" will raise anyone's eyebrows.  A person who has many friends sounds more legitimate, and one with numerous mutual friends - heck! They have to be legit, right?  Anyone with a motive to cause harm, stalk, or otherwise influence you or your real friends can use this trick.  They look for names close to your own, your business, your life and find out who your mutual friends are.  They then attempt to friend these individuals.  Even if they only succeed in having their friend requests accepted 30% of the time - if you have 100 friends, 30 of them "accepted" the request.  A previously unknown person attempting to friend you while having 30 "mutual friends" sounds pretty legitimate.

Fortunately, while the internet provides these evil persons the means to try and wheedle into your life through yet another method, it also provides you with the tools to verify.  Google searches for valid individuals will return at least a smattering of information.  Google image searches can be a godsend in and of itself.  These ne'er do wells have to steal their profile images from somewhere, and you can be pretty sure they didn't randomly snap a picture of their own neighbors to put up as their own.  They used the internet to find the image in the first place.  You can "use it" right back!

If you are a victim of harassment, stalking, or other means of intimidation, don't forget to keep your guard up on line as well.  If they're motivated, have at least a rudimentary idea of how social networking and social engineering work, and time - you'll have to watch this battle line as well.

If you do find yourself a victim, and can identify the person who's identity they are attempting to steal (in whole or in part) contact that individual.  If they are legitimately the person attempting to gain access to your on-line life, they will have no problems saying just that.  If their images or demographic information is being used without their knowledge - they'll be happy to have it pointed out they are being victimized as well.