Hacking can cause a person’s reputation to be damaged and cost them thousands in lost advertising revenue. Dale Berry is the owner of an English preschool in Japan. He was victimized when his Facebook account compromised. Hackers posed as legitimate ads on the account, which stripped his business of funds and left him with a tarnished reputation.
The hackers first targeted those with weak passwords like “qwerty” and “password.” Once they have access to an account, they check the top five most popular friends and impersonate one of them and ask for the password reset code. The hackers then take advantage an additional security feature that allows people to add trusted contacts to their account in the event they forget their password. They can then ask these trusted friends to give them the one-time code that will allow them access to the account.
Another method hackers can gain access to accounts is by buying stolen login information. A cache of 26 million Amazon, LinkedIn and app-ink.net/transitioning-from-the-drm-to-the-vdr Facebook passwords was recently found available for sale on the dark web. A lot of them were leaking through custom Trojan malware that infiltrated millions Windows-based PCs between the years of 2018 through 2020.
Users can be protected from these attacks if they always make sure that the address bar of their browsers says Facebook and not another site. They should also choose a password that combines numbers spaces, letters and spaces and never reuse the same password on other social media or email accounts. Additionally they should monitor their activity notifications frequently. Twitter is an example. It sends a notification when there’s a suspicious login from a new device or location.
