Social Stalking: How Posting Photos Online Could Lead To Unwelcome Visitors
NEW YORK (CBS) - Could sharing your pictures online with friends and family lead a curious stranger to your door?
It's scary, but it happened recently to more than a dozen college students. CBS's Tony Aiello demonstrated how easy it is to become a victim of social stalking.
Aiello used an online tool called Gramfeed that maps Instagram pictures in real time to see who was nearby. He was able to pinpoint a woman's exact location, knew about the Japanese tea she had for breakfast and that she recently traveled to London.
"Kinda scary!" Teng told Aiello.
Lance Ulanoff, a social media expert at Mashable, said that people are leaving "a trail of breadcrumbs" on their social media sites.
"If you, Tony Aiello, can find this person like that, so can anyone else," Ulanoff said.
Recently, Arturo Galvan of Menifee, California, was accused of stalking more than a dozen female college students by scrolling through their social media posts to figure out where they lived. Pictures from parties, bars and restaurants told Galvan when the victims were away and that's when he allegedly broke into their places and stole underwear, bras, jewelry and electronics.
"You've posted on Instagram repeatedly throughout the day, and there are services that can connect the dots," Ulanoff said.
To combat this type of stalking, experts say to delay posting pictures when you are out and not to post pictures of your home, or information that reveals your daily routine.
They also say to learn to manage the location and privacy settings on your mobile device, by telling it to never use your location when posting to social media.
"Double check to see what settings are available and what privacy settings you could set," Kevin Cohen, president of Data Triage President Kevin Cohen said.
Experts say it's important to recheck your security settings after downloading updates for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media apps.
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