TECH TALK. Police Chief Inspector Allan S. Cabanlong, chief of the Regional Information Technology Management Office in Region I, warned the public about the dangers of sharing too much personal information in social media in forum about Cybersecurity in a science fair organized by the Department of Science and Technology held at NCCC Mall activity Center, Davao City on Tuesday, July 26. (Paulo C. Rizal/davaotoday.com)
DAVAO CITY — As part of the National Science and Technology week celebration, the Regional Information Technology Management Office (RITMO) has warned about the growing threat to cybersecurity, urging the public to give more effort to protect private information in different social media sites.
Police Chief Inspector Allan S. Cabanlong, RITMO chief, who was the speaker during the tech talk on “Cybersecurity” said that they give inputs on the awareness and prevention of giving of private information among the social media users who are not tech-savvy “which are mostly students and adults”.
He said social media users should not give or post any of their identification online.
“Don’t give your birthday, your mother’s maiden name, and your passwords. If someone will email you, you verify it first,” he said.
Cabanlong said that social media users will not detect it yet the scammers or hackers online would eventually get at them “especially if they were friend in social media.”
“The best thing you can do is to limit your information that you are giving online because your information is very important to those criminals,” Cabanlong said.
He said “these criminals” might create new accounts “under your name to get information on credit cared transactions”.
“For example, I can now go to the bank, apply or call the credit card personnel, since I know your birthday, address, mother’s maiden name, last school attended, your mobile number and those are the transactions needed for the credit card companies.So these are the information you should not disclose to anyone,” he said.
Cabanlong said that social media users should be vigilant since these “scammers or hackers” are joining the users in Facebook, Twitter and Instagram because “these are platforms that we can use to also gather information.”
He said the RITMO also give lectures to executives on how to create policies on office cybersecurity, and to police officers on how to prepare themselves on online problems.
“They should learn how to use the internet properly, I always conduct lectures in schools even international. I always I go out every year just to speak abroad US, Singapore and Malaysia,” he said.
Cabanlong said that in using the social media, users should “think before you click” to secure their identification.
The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is holding the National Science and Technology Week 2016 with a theme of “Juan Science, One Nation” at NCCC Mall Activity Area, Ma-a here which started from July 25 up to 27 this year.(davaotoday.com)
