The 9gag data mining scam

(Or: what is your <insert meme here> name? Click here to find out.)

Perhaps you're an occasional browser of 9gag or similar sites, and have come across images like these before:

Instagram-TropicalHouse-8dc5ec

People inevitably reply in the comments section with their hilarious name. Lately I've seen a lot more of these images than usual, and I'm guessing it's actually an attempt at data mining by some hacker trying to dox people. The questions on the images vary; sometimes it's the first letter of your name, sometimes it's the date you were born, the month you were born, the first letter of your mother's maiden name, and so on. People who are stupid enough to reply to these images with that data eventually create a very usable data trail that can be used by hackers to impersonate them on the phone. So yeah, have fun explaining to your bank that you publicly posted all details about your life in a poorly obfuscated manner.

Posted in Tech

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