According to Darius Povilaitis, a cybersecurity expert at “Telia,” it is easy to find out not only a person’s workplace or position but also their hobbies, social circle, travel habits, and daily routine from public social media profiles. By combining these details, it is possible not only to predict a person’s behavior and interests but also to create highly convincing fraud scenarios.
A 2026 survey conducted in the USA showed that as many as 60% of internet users have information online that they would not want others to find. The reason is simple: people often reveal much more on social networks than they think.
Cybercriminals use various public information to prepare highly convincing phishing attacks. For example, after learning a person’s position from “LinkedIn” and seeing on “Facebook” or “Instagram” that they are on vacation, criminals can create a convincing scam scenario and impersonate a colleague or boss asking to urgently make a payment or share confidential information.
“In recent years, the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has not only made it easier to search and analyze publicly available information but also opened up new threats. AI tools can help quickly find and link data from various sources, including registries or databases, and publicly available voice and video recordings can be used to create ‘deepfake’ forgeries. Just a few dozen seconds of audio recording are enough to generate content that imitates a person’s voice, which can later be used for financial fraud or blackmail,” notes D. Povilaitis.
A new currency of the digital economy
However, public information interests not only criminals. Employers and recruitment specialists often review candidates’ social media profiles before job interviews to form an opinion about their professionalism and reputation. Companies analyze people’s hobbies, followed pages, and online behavior to show more targeted advertising.
For example, after starting to search online for travel information, offers for flights, hotels, or travel organizers may soon appear. If you publicize information about a family addition, you may receive advertisements for baby products.
Meanwhile, data brokers collect information from various sources about residence, age, marital status, interests, and other data to form detailed user profiles. These profiles are later used for advertising, sales, or market research purposes, so personal information today has tangible financial value and has become one of the most important resources of the digital economy.
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“The more information about a person can be collected, the easier it is to predict their behavior, hobbies, consumption habits, or even decisions made. That is why personal data is often called the new currency of the digital economy,” emphasizes D. Povilaitis.
How to protect your privacy?
The “Telia” cybersecurity expert advises never to post exact residential addresses, phone numbers, photos of personal documents, bank details, or real-time travel plans on social networks. Also, avoid sharing answers to commonly used security questions, such as mother’s maiden name, birth dates, pet’s name, or school name.
It is important to regularly review privacy settings, limit publicly visible information, and disable automatic location tagging. It is also recommended to use strong and unique passwords, multi-factor authentication, and periodically check whether personal data has appeared in publicly known data breach lists.
“The biggest mistake almost all social media users make is believing that a single piece of information is not important. At first glance, an innocent post about a vacation, a photo from a work event, or a publicly visible friends list seems insignificant. However, by combining these data into a whole, a very accurate profile of a person can be created. It is not one specific detail but the sum of many small pieces of information that today becomes the main tool of cybercriminals,” notes D. Povilaitis.
The expert urges people to periodically “Google” themselves and assess what information about them is publicly available. The smaller the digital footprint and the more controlled the personal information, the harder it is to use it against the person.
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