Twitter Might Be Bad for Your Security

There’s an interesting post up on The Financial Brand blog about Bank of America’s effort to enhance its customer service via Twitter.

The bank might want to think twice about that.

I noticed an interesting tweet the other day on Wachovia’s Twitter customer service feed.

Wachovia tweeted: “What Wachovia banking questions can I help with today? Send them to me, but don’t send any personal financial info.”

That’s odd, I thought. Who would send their personal financial information via Twitter? So I posted a tweet to Wachovia’s feed asking, “Do people often tweet their personal details?”

Wachovia answered, “It may happen from time 2 time. We want to err on the side of protecting customers & preventing information sharing. So we tweet 2 help.”

From “time to time” is not never. And if it happens to Wachovia, I have little doubt that the Twitter feeds from the nation’s other major banks find similar information published for the world to see. Does this nix Twitter as a customer service channel? Of course not. But it does raise a bright red flag. There are risks everyone, including on Twitter.