Protect yourself by becoming high hanging fruit.

High hanging fruit is tough to reach while low hanging fruit is easiest to reach. Suppose you went to an apple orchard and decided you wanted an apple. The owner said it was ok to pick one from a tree and eat it for lunch. You would probably grab one from one of the lower branches. The apple you chose is low hanging fruit.

Suppose you wanted another apple. You probably would not grab a ladder, lean it against the tree, climb the ladder, grab the highest hanging fruit, pick it and devour that second apple. Why not? Too much work. You could have enjoyed a similar apple without needing a ladder in the first place.

Hackers and identity thieves want low hanging fruit.

Apply this strategy to the black hat hacker, or any criminal who wants to victimize you online. They want to score an apple and achieve it by doing the least amount of work. You and your identity are the apple. Let’s see if you are low hanging fruit or high hanging fruit. Here are two different personas.

1. Low hanging fruit. He uses a password of qwerty whenever he can get away with it vs. High hanging fruit. He uses a password $Palmer3450 because he wants one that is tough to guess or crack.
2. Low hanging fruit. He sorts his mail over the recycle bin and throws the preapproved credit card bulk mail into the bin without even opening the envelope vs. High hanging fruit. He sorts his mail over the recycle bin and throws the preapproved credit card bulk mail into the bin without even opening the envelope.
3. Low hanging fruit. He lists his birthday online. It helps him meet women vs. High hanging fruit. He suppresses birthday information online.
4. Low hanging fruit. He shares pictures of his kids vs. High hanging fruit. He keeps family pictures private.
5. Low hanging fruit. He shares travel plans and pictures as they occur vs. High hanging fruit. He shares travel highlights and pictures only after returning home.

Let’s examine these criteria one-by-one.

1. A black hat hacker running a password generator could guess “querty” because it is one of the top 25 passwords, as reported by http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/16/worlds-common-passwords-revealed-using/. The “$Palmer3450” password would take a brute force attacker 400 years, according to https://howsecureismypassword.net/. You can visit https://howsecureismypassword.net/ and test yours.
2. Mail and preapproved offers. Your incoming mail says a lot about you. This includes your name, address, habits, profession and vendors. Identity thieves go through trash to learn information and build profiles of their targets. That’s why you should shred any bulk mail with your name, address or other private information.
3. With your birthday, an identity thief has valuable information he can use when building your profile and pursuing additional information, such as your social security number.
4. Pictures of kids. Your kids are cute. Sex traffickers may also find them cute and try stealing them or keeping them as slaves. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/20/us/sex-trafficking/index.html has a disturbing writeup on Atlanta’s underage sex industry.
5. Sharing travel plans and pictures. The can wait until you get home.

She learned the hard way.

One of my friends positioned herself as low hanging fruit. She learned the hard way. She posted a picture of an envelope online. This included her name and home address. She also visited a friend in Hawaii and posted pictures online. She journaled online how she was having a wonderful time in Hawaii and had “only five more days there.”

I think you know where this is going. Someone burglarized her home. We can only wonder if the crook found her online, learned where she lived, learned how long she would be in Hawaii and then burglarized her home. She and her home became low hanging fruit. She provided the valuable information the thief needed.

The thief may have had two options. One was to learn about a potential victim, learn when they were not home and learn what possessions they abandon every day. The other option was to check out this woman’s social media page. She already posted her home address, shared that she was out of town and wore tons of jewelry. She made the burglar’s job easy.

I told her she was playing with fire by posting that envelope with her home address. If it were me, I would have gone to Hawaii, taken all the pictures and journaled privately. After returning home would I post online, “Here are last week’s Hawaii pictures. Had a great time there. I am back home doing my usual routine. Good day everybody.”

Your takeaway.

Review your practices and compare them to my 5-point table. Determine if you are low hanging fruit, or high hanging fruit. When you are high hanging fruit, hackers and thieves will pursue others, who offer an easier score.