The Philippine social media community has been abuzz with alarm and concern about people getting personalized scam or spam messages addressed to each recipient by name through short message service (SMS), or commonly known as text message, sent to mobile phone numbers.
In the past, these users would receive what could be called “generic spam” text messages offering jobs, informing them of winning a raffle prize, alerting them of a bank transaction, or asking for some personal information. But the message format was so obvious that people could immediately identify them as a spam or scam.
In the past weeks, the people sending those messages have leveled up and they now identify each recipient by name. That a stranger has sent this message is definitely a matter to cause alarm for it means that some unscrupulous people have captured one’s name and mobile phone number, with thousands of others. What other personal information have they captured? There is obviously a data leak somewhere.
But there’s much more to worry about, other than our names and numbers being known to scammers.
We need to worry more about the information we do not hesitate to give to social networking sites when we create our accounts.
Social networking sites ask for one’s name, work, phone number, gender, hometown, birthday, current address, language, places visited, and list of friends. These are data that you willingly gave so that you could create an account.
In exchange for having wide…
