Stealing financial information such as of credit cards is now no big deal for cybercriminals, and the “credit” goes to none other than some of the youngsters who proudly and intentionally post pictures of their IDs, credit cards on Twitter and Instagram. This makes the job of cybercriminals and hackers easier than ever! Not only this, some users even post their driver’s license in full view and unknowingly exposing sensitive information like their complete name, home address, etc.

A simple search query on any of these social sharing sites can find the sensitive documents. Besides, it is quite easy to find hundreds of similar images via Google image search. Of course, all these things cannot be coming from a person who understands the consequences. Most of the driver’s license or debit/credit cards I’ve seen belonged to teenagers, possibly 16 to 18 year olds, who are too young and unaware of the effects of their actions. This age group normally has a tendency to do things to show off prestige, social status and be considered “cool” among their peers. And the worst part is that the trend is on rise!

Just recently, the blogging website Tumblr was hacked by a group called GNAA that created a worm that flooded users’ dashboards with spam. The hackers exposed a small piece of JavaScript code which led to a pop-up page for people who were actively logged in, and when their browser hit that URL, it prompted the user, and the page would then re-blog, thus spreading the virus.

Lately, a security researcher by the name of Carlos Reventlov, published an article on how to attack Instagram and gain control of another user’s account. Reventlov discovered the vulnerability in mid-November and actually developed the attack to prove his research. Although he notified Instagram of the problem on November 11, it has yet to be addressed. So, if the problem continues to persist, that day is not so far when Instagram will be facing the consequences too.