Hacking can cause a person’s reputation to be damaged and result in thousands of dollars in lost advertising revenue. This is what happened to Dale Berry, the owner of a preschool English academy in Japan who had his Facebook account compromised by scammers. Hackers posed as legitimate ads on his account, which drained his business of funds and left him with a damaged reputation.
The hackers first targeted people with weak passwords, such as “qwerty” and “password.” Once they have access to an account, they scan the top five most popular friends and impersonate one of them to ask for a password reset code. The hackers then use a security feature which lets users add trusted contacts to their account in the event that they forget their password. They can ask their trusted friends to give them the unique code that allows them to gain access to the account.
Another way hackers gain access to accounts is through the purchase of stolen login information. A cache of 26 million Amazon, LinkedIn and Facebook passwords was recently discovered available on the dark web. Many of these were leaked through custom Trojan malware that infiltrated millions of Windows-based computers between 2018 to 2020.
Users can protect themselves from attacks by making sure they always make sure that the address bar on their browser says Facebook and not a different site. They should also choose an account password that includes numbers spaces, letters and spaces and never reuse the same password hop over to these guys for other email or social media accounts. Also, they should check their notifications regularly for activity. Twitter for instance, sends out notifications when the user logs into the account from a new location or device.