Your home is where you should feel the safest and most secure. So shouldn’t you guard information like your address to protect that security? Yet we give that away almost daily, every time we fill out a form or sign up for something. Images of your home and your address are valuable information for bad actors, who can use them for criminal activity like scams and fraud. Let’s run through some common scenarios.
Address Fraud
If your current or past address is listed publicly, bad actors can use that information for address fraud, a form of identity theft. This uses the change of address process to reroute your mail to a different address. Once they’ve rerouted your mail, bad actors can use it to get additional information about you, such as your credit card info or your social security number. Your address can be used to open credit cards or take out loans in your name or steal your identity. Even if your address isn’t listed anywhere online, you may have revealed it unknowingly. For example, you took a selfie or family photo in your front yard, and your house number is visible in the corner.
Real Estate Photos
Once bad actors have your address, it’s easy to search on real estate sites and view interior and exterior images and information such as the layout, entry points, and floor plans. They can even see how much the home costs to estimate how much you make every year.
Bad actors can then create a map of your home and sell it to thieves to target for a robbery.
Vacation Photos
It’s summer vacation, at last—your toes in the sand, a cold drink in your hand, and the first thing you want to do is take a photo and post it on Facebook to make everyone else jealous. While it’s natural to want to document your vacation, it’s better to hold off from posting photos until after you’ve returned home and avoid advertising your travel itinerary to reveal where you’ll be and when you’re giving thieves the time to plan execute a home robbery. Even if your social media is set to private, you never know who might see it. For example, if a friend is reading your status update at a coffee shop, a stranger could see the post from over their shoulder. The wrong person might realize you’re away and take advantage of your home being empty and vulnerable.
Hush safeguards your home information and protects your security by searching the web for vulnerabilities like your address and images of your home. Once we find and flag the places where your address is revealed, with your permission, we then eliminate it from the Internet. Sign up for Hush to defend your home and your privacy.
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