- Jan 8, 2011
- 21,522
Targeted Scams and Leaking Confidential DataMost of us now use online platforms routinely – in some countries, almost exclusively – to engage with work colleagues, friends, family and loved ones.
One worrying trend is the posting online of photos of home-working setups, video calls, and virtual meetings.
This trend has coined its own series of hashtags including #WorkFromHome, #WorkingFromHome, #RemoteWork, #HomeOffice. Others allude to the app used, such as #Zoom and #MSTeams.
While the sharing of such photos may seem harmless and even a must-do at the time, the reality is that we are, once again, falling into the age-old trap of oversharing online and overlooking the risks.
We are forgetting to ask ourselves: what might a criminal or fraudster do with this information?
Analysis of images of home-working environments has revealed work email inboxes, internal emails, names of individuals in emails, private web pages, potentially sensitive internal business correspondence, software installed on computers, and internal identification numbers of devices.
In many cases this information was in the background of video calls or photos of pets near/on keyboards, in the background of children being home-schooled, or within snaps of a nice home-made lunch. Any of these digital footprints could be used in a corporate hack.
Continue reading

I see you: your home-working photos reveal more than you think!
Beware of sensitive data lurking in the background of your video calls and social pictures.
