Don’t broadcast your vacation plans this Christmas!

We’ve stated in previous articles that the amount of certain crimes, both in the real world and on the Internet, will dramatically increase as the festive season arrives.

And in some cases, the crimes in question involve both the online and offline worlds.

One popular example being crimes that involve the victim unwittingly sharing too much information about themselves over social networks, only to have their candidness exploited by criminals.

In this case we’re not talking about identity theft, but what we call the openly-open-house scam where victims unintentionally inform criminals via the Internet when they will be leaving their houses and consequently leaving them vulnerable to burglary.

Like many scams, an integral factor for it to work involves a victim not protecting their privacy adequately when online. Just like identity theft, scammers can collect seemingly innocuous information about you that you share online, and use it against you.

And this scam is one that will inevitably rise as houses across the world will be left unattended during the holiday season as many will travel to see friends and family.

So announcing those plans on social networking sites may not be the greatest idea, especially if your privacy settings are left wanting.

And remember, if the scammers got that information from your social networking account, they’ll probably know more about you to, like your name, and where you’re going – meaning they could even fool your neighbours into believing they know you if they get caught!

It may sound far-fetched to some but it happens, as this man from Arizona found out after some misguided Tweets!