Your location and personal data is almost more valuable to scammers than money as it can be used for a far greater number of things, and one ethical and experienced hacker reveals exactly how it can be stolen in just a single click.
While security measures on the gadgets that we use are stronger than ever before, there are still plenty of creative methods that scammers take advantage of in order to force people into compromising their data.
One of the most popular methods used by bad actors at the moment is what's known as 'quishing', and that has even evolved into attaching QR codes to unwanted packages in an attempt to force a scan, but something far simpler is affecting a worrying number of people.
Thankfully ethical hacker Ryan "0day" Montgomery is here with some valuable information that helps you avoid falling victim to one of these scams, issuing a 'stay safe' warning to all of his followers.
How can your location data be exposed in a single click?
As shared in a video on his Instagram, Ryan Montgomery explains how hackers send links through text messages that aim to dupe people into entering fake websites designed to steal your data.
"A scammer could send a text like this that looks somewhat legitimate and maybe they checked out your personal profiles and know where you work so they send a more personalized text message," 0day explains alongside a mockup of the type of text that a scammer would send.
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Cutting then to the program that he has set up alongside the fake website, it shows how quickly and accurately scammers can get your location data after just a single click.
Once you enter the link and allow it to access your location – something many people do as a habit at this point – your exact latitude, longitude, and altitude are immediately sent to the hacker, allowing them to know precisely where you are in the world at that point in time.
How to avoid falling victim to location stealing scams
As you might expect, 0day's best and most effective advice is simply to not open links from strangers, as you never quite know how safe something is despite it looking like a legitimate message.
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As he mentioned, hackers can often find information about you and your life online and use that to make their messages appear more legitimate, causing you to briefly forget about precaution. However, just a single click is enough to leave you compromised, so it's best to always practice restraint and go through other methods in order to stay as safe as possible.
Some comments have pointed out that thanks to the rise in AI these attacks will not only become more sophisticated but also more frequent, as black market models are being sold to make attacks like these easier than ever for scammers to carry out.