REMEMBER my earlier post “Bewarethat Internet Cafe?”

Well, you may not take my word for it but you sure can the real techies in the field who know how things are in this cyberage. It was Techie Diary who verbally actually first gave us and a couple of blogger-friends an inkling of how others could actually steal your vital and secret data from the dime-a-dozen cybercafes in town you sometimes patronize –carelessly, I might add.

Now, here’s another, if more “thought-provoking” one on the subject from TechnoPinoy. I’d rather quote /cite him verbatim ‘coz it makes more sense than if Itry to hurriedly paraphrase his words of caution:

Here goes, you careless keyboard punchers out there (uh, remind me to save to buy me a laptop instead, safer, more secure pounding on its keys for online transactions, sez Wilson):

This statement pretty much captures the prevalent thinking of most consumers.  People tend to treat their personal information as a trivial matter.  They throw away their electric bill statements or their phone bill, thinking that nobody would really need that information.  Or they simply walk away from an Internet cafe without bothering to erase their tracks or the websites they visited.  Or worse yet, when a telemarketer calls and asks for reference, they quickly give 5 names of their friends.  What’s the risk in that?
Think about it:  would you really want someone to track and log your online activities?  Would you really want someone to capture your email address and password?  Or your mailing address?  Or your credit card number and PIN?  Maybe the fraudster can’t perform any funds transfer to their account (easily traceable), but they can, for the fun of it, pay YOUR bills using ALL your money, leaving you with no money in your account.  Or max out your credit limit.  Or change your email account’s password.  Or send an email to someone using your email address.  

TechnoPinoy adds:

People can profit from your personal information.  They can sell it to marketers and contact list aggregators.  The more of your information a person has, the greater the value.  If a person was able to build an entire profile of you—your full name, address, phone number, mobile phone, email—imagine the value of that versus just a simple name and phone number.  All it takes is a name and a contact number.  A company obtains this information, checks its database to see if the person is an existing customer, and if not, gives the person a call.  True, maybe you may need the customer’s service or product, but the act of answering a phone call already takes up a few minutes of your time.  And sometimes all it takes is that few minutes to really irritate you.

And finally, to drive home the point that identity theft is a reality, he concludes:

True, maybe your activities in an internet cafe may not provide enough information for someone to commit fraud, but it does give him SOME information.   And before you know it, the fraudster has assembled enough information to masquerade you and you are now a victim of identity theft.