Should You Keep Your Income A Secret? How Your Personal Salary Can Be Weaponized

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It’s common to avoid making yourself a target for mugging or attack, like avoiding walking home alone at night or never flaunting cash in public. Yet we tend to lack the same hypervigilance in the digital world.

As corporate defenses against hackers have grown stronger, cybercriminals focus on individuals. High-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) are especially under threat, as their affluence and reputations make them attractive targets for theft, blackmail, extortion, and harassment. According to a 2017 study, 28% of HNWIs have been victims of at least one cyber attack. Perhaps more shocking is that a third of respondents had no cybersecurity plan in place. Anyone with a high net worth or valuable personal assets has the potential to be targeted, and those who are attacked suffer not only financially but reputationally.

Sharing Your Salary Comes With Consequences​

There are several ways bad actors can gain access to wealth and salary information. Company pay rates could be leaked by employees themselves, either accidentally or on purpose, like in the case of Microsoft employees who shared their salaries in a push for pay transparency. Bad actors weaponize salary or net worth information to select future targets for fraud, hacking, scams, or worse. Hackers use social engineering to gain a victim’s trust and discover sensitive information for blackmail, such as inappropriate texts or fraudulent company activity. Exposed wealth information also poses the physical threat of burglaries, car theft, or even kidnapping for ransom.

Bad actors don’t just go after HNWIs, but the people surrounding them, including staff. For example, if a staff member such as a personal assistant lists on their LinkedIn who they work for, hackers could break into their device to find the target’s home information—and not just the address, but floor plans and entry points, which can be used to plan a robbery. Similarly, cybercriminals prey on the children of wealthy families, who could be careless about sharing personal information on social media.

Even tech giants are unable to fully defend themselves against attack. Bad actors impersonate celebrities online for financial schemes, like in the Twitter hack of 2020 that targeted wealthy individuals. Hackers hijacked the accounts of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, and Kim Kardashian, among others, and lured followers into sending Bitcoin payments. The incident occurred because of a social engineering attack that targeted Twitter employees.

Let Hush Be Your Secret Weapon Against Bad Actors

Generic cybersecurity programs aren’t a strong enough defense to protect families and businesses from bad actors. Hush takes a comprehensive approach by examining your entire digital footprint for vulnerabilities and accounting for financial, reputational, and physical risks. We find, flag, and remove sensitive information, like your salary, that puts you at risk of being targeted. We take care to find anything friends, colleagues, or family members may have revealed online too. Hush is the best defense to protect yourself, your family, and your business from bad actors.

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