Head of the Roskachestvo Center for Digital Expertise Anton Kukanov, in an interview with the Prime agency, revealed a way to find out a phone number via the Internet.
He noticed that there are a lot of opportunities for this – from periodically occurring information leakage to personal data that users indicate about themselves on social networks and on websites. “This is possible thanks to a search by phone number,” the expert explained.
According to him, even if you disable this feature, but use the same profile photo in the messenger and social networks, an elementary image search in a search engine will lead attackers to the public page.
In the event that information on social networks is freely available, everyone can find out personal data up to the place of residence, work or study. Attackers can also find out the social circle and even the route of daily trips.
In order to complicate the task, it is worth separating phone numbers for important and not very important accounts. So, banking applications should not be tied to a public number that the user leaves on the site. The specialist also recommends removing photos and personal information in messengers, and prohibiting the search for an account in social networks by phone number.
Previously, CEO of ANO Digital Platforms Arseny Shcheltsin stated that the phone number gives scammers more personal information than it might seem. So, they can find out the name and passport data, and already by them find out whether a person owns real estate or cars, therefore, assess the level of well-being of a potential victim.