Keeping up with the Kardashians… and your privacy settings

On Monday morning, Kim Kardashian West’s spokesperson and
Paris officials revealed that she was robbed at gunpoint in her private Paris
residence. As the story quickly began to trend on social media platforms,
this also turned into a scammer’s paradise, capitalizing on high public
interest to entice people to click on links or attachments.  

In fact, within the first 24 hours after the incident was made
public, Norton recorded a whopping 2400% increase in Kim-Kardashian
related spam and scams.

In order to make money, steal
personal information or do damage, attackers used a social engineering tactic
that uses current events as a hook to play on people’s emotions and attract
attention. As a result, nearly one hundred different subject-line
variations were seen in spam messages alone associated with
Kardashian’s name, including “Breaking News” and “Photos of” in the subject
line. The majority of messages Norton has tracked so far are in English,
French and German.

Are you unknowingly
letting intruders into your personal life? If you are constantly on Snapchat or
Instagram, here are some tips to take note of:

·         Geotagging:

o   By
default, Snapchat provides no information about someone’s
location. However, users can use “geofilters” which apply a special overlay to
their snaps. This information is usually the name of the city, state or
associated with a landmark or business, but it does not pinpoint the users’
approximate location.

o   Instagram on
the other hand allows users to geotag their photos or videos with a specific
landmark/location. The only other way to identify someone’s location would be
by identifying any landmarks in the images themselves. So remember, don’t
geotag photos from personal locations (like your home, office, a friend or
family members’ home)!

·         Privacy
settings:

o   Ensure
that you regularly review your privacy settings

o   Remove
geotags on previously posted photos from these personal locations by viewing your photomap (Instagram)

o   If
you’re a Snapchat user, be sure you know who can view your Snapchat stories and who can
contact you

Top tips for staying
safe from social engineering scams:

–          Don’t
open e-mails or click on attachments from those you don’t know

–          Be
sceptical:  just because you’ve seen it on your newsfeed doesn’t
mean it’s not a scam. Your friends may have fallen victim to a click-jacking
scam and are not even aware of it

–          Think
before clicking: Hover over the URL before
clicking to see what kind of site you’ll be redirected to – a good rule of
thumb is to visit only websites you know and trust.  You can also use Norton
Safe Search to verify a website’s legitimacy

–          Be
suspicious of any calls to action:  if it asks you to fill our
information, download a plug-in (which could be malware in disguise) or share
with friends before watching or reading the content, that should be an
immediate red flag

–          Report
suspicious activities or content to the social media platform
or your e-mail service provider

Further information
social engineering scams are available on Norton’s website.