Identity thieves gather personal information from social media sites. Even if you have your account on the highest security settings, there are still ways for an identity thief to get your information. Most social network sites have information that is required, such as email address or birthday. It’s common for an identity thief to hack an email account by using social information. For example, a common technique to get personal information is by clicking on “forgot password” and trying to recover the information through email. Once the thief has access to your email account, they then have access to all information on your social networking sites.
So what can you do to protect yourself? You don’t have to delete all your social profiles or hide from the real world; just take these precautions.