
A reformed burglar has given details on how a criminal can use your user account as a tool for committing a crime.
How other internet tools are abused?
"The information people give out on Facebook, when linked up with other information freely available on the internet, is an absolute
goldmine for criminals," the Daily Mail quoted Michael Fraser, a reformed burglar who presents the BBC's 'Beat The Burglar' programme, as saying.
For instance
Your friend of a friend may know your name, address and birth date, so by these details there are tools in net to find out
- What you do for a living?
- How much your home is worth?
To decide, whether you're likely worth for burgling? :)
How photos depicts about you?
The posted party pictures on Facebook can calculated to know
What kind of valuables you have in the house
And where are the Valuables

Obviously when there is no one in home, and by Street View, actual photographs of your home to confirm
- Whether there is burglar alarm
- There are any bushes in the garden to hide
- There are any alleyways to escape down
"Burglars only burgle homes if they think they can get away with it. All of this information is likely to leave them feeling much more confident that they can," added Fraser.
Co-operative Insurance Company in the UK revealed that 36% of users regularly make use of them to broadcast their whereabouts when they are away from home.
A stranger who you accept as friend into your Facebook account:
- They can begin delicately asking questions to build up information about you
- After getting the email address then they could go to your email account pretending to be you and saying you have forgotten your password.
- Security question something like your favorite food or your first pet.., it isn't hard for them to work conversations round to subjects like that on Facebook, over the following weeks and months.
Once they have that secret information, the email account will let them in. And once they are in there, they can find lots of sensitive information, such as your Amazon and eBay account history .
Later they may pretend to be you saying you have lost your password and get passwords from that sites
"Crooks who do this usually use the credit card details you have stored there to buy online gift vouchers that can be traded on the internet. It is a form of instant currency.
"Even worse, if you have a PayPal account and have credit in it, your so-called friend could clean it out.
"Effectively, they have become an electronic version of you, they can change all your passwords and begin stealing from you.
Burglar Alarm
You wouldn’t invite a perfect stranger into your house simply because they knocked on your door and said they wanted a look around. So why do it on Facebook?," -Hart added
So it is must for not only here what mentioned but basically every aspect not to allow such kind of loopholes for security.