Screen Safety

Some time ago, someone posted a screenshot in the Tower of Saviors Discord server, and for some specific reason it did caught my attention.

Source

In that server, we have dozens of channels, each with their own purposes and rules, so naturally we also have dozens of thousands of messages flooding in the server every day. As a moderator, I have to somehow make sure that no one is doing something wrong in the server. Many stuff can be considered as wrong, such as doxing, spreading cheating game extensions, sharing illegal sites, dropping porn around, and other stuff that goes against common sense. Well, the game isn't super popular nor the server is large, so things like these does not happen all the time. To be honest, they almost never happen, and most of the active members do have the common sense to ping the staff when something bad happens. So, being a mod isn't that exhausting, provided that you have the right members in the server, and I'm quite glad that I have them around.

But still, I scroll through chats from time to time to make sure that conversations are healthy. Plus, some stuff are just too good to be missed out. Like, hilarious comics in the #memes channel. I don't deserve to miss that out.

Most of the times, I spend time in off-topic channels instead of the game discussion ones. Or to be more exact, I check the chat logs there more often (I'm sure that I have more messages sent in game discussion channels anyways). It's not that things tend to go wrong there, but the discussions there tend to be more interesting. People discuss all sorts of things there, from food to memes and even country issues (most of the times it's about Venezuela because our server owner is from there, and most of the times the discussion is pretty painful, we all hope that their situation can be fixed sooner or later). So, digging in off-topic channels always gives better surprises than the game discussion ones, since well, what's a better surprise than a good meme?

So that day, I was online again, scrolling through one of the off-topic channels, hoping to find something fun in the pile of unread messages. But then...

There was a guy who sent a WhatsApp screenshot, in which the chat's content makes no sense to me. I guess it's some riot in his group after someone got a few lucky draws in the game, with some emote spam as well as random gibberish that I don't understand. No use trying to make sense out of it, I thought, and continued scrolling.

Within seconds I hit the bottom of the chat, nothing special . Out of boredom I scrolled back up, and that screenshot came under my eyes again.

Just when I wanted to scroll away...hold on.

Something's wrong with that screenshot.

---

No, I'm not saying about the content that makes no sense to me. It's the phone numbers.

WhatsApp displays phone numbers in place of names if you don't have them in your contacts, and that's the biggest issue of this screenshot. Apart from his own phone number, his friends' phone numbers are also in there. A few on top of chat bubbles, a few on the chat title bar, and another few in quotes.

That's really a lot of phone numbers.

I don't want to write a few thousand words on how others can use your phone numbers, but I'll touch a few here. In the smallest case, nothing will happen. Worsen it a bit, you might get annoying advertising calls and SMSs as well as random WhatsApp groups that drop advertisements right on your face. In some slightly larger cases you get prank calls and illegal things like that trying to bait your money, while in even larger places people can even custom make you a neat police-themed ransomware to literally make you pay the attackers willingly. I might sound like exaggerating but it's 2018, everything can happen. We do live in a sci-fi world.

So I dropped the sender a message on the issue, reminding him about the phone numbers, and ask him to do something appropraite (including leaving it there if he wants to). Luckily he's online, and within minutes he removed it, thanking me for reminding him of how stupid he was. To be honest, I will remove it on my own with my mod powers if he did not remove it within 10 minutes. It's just too dangerous to leave phone numbers on the web like that, you really don't know what others can do with such information in their hands, especially it's a big bunch of phone numbers all in once.

Leaving that screenshot on the web can be considered wrong for me, not because it causes harm to others, but it causes harm to you, the sender.

Here, take these advices:

- Before posting screenshots, double check if something nasty happened and left some unwanted information on them. Crop them out or blur them with your fancy image editing software.

- Remember that people can see what you type in password fields since they are not hidden directly and keyboard popups are a thing, so keep that in mind if you are doing screen recordings of your phone.

- Notifications can drop down from the top of the screen when you least expect it. Disable notifications if you are doing screen recordings or livestreams directly from your phone.

And lastly, stay careful on the net :3 There isn't always a guy like me that takes care of mistakes like these, and the consequences can be extra hard to fix.

Better be safe than sorry, see you next time!

--Lilacse

--- Posted from my [blog](http://lilacse.vornix.blog/) with [SteemPress](https://wordpress.org/plugins/steempress).