Hacking can cause a person’s reputation to be damaged and cost them thousands of dollars in lost advertising revenue. That’s what happened to Dale Berry, the owner of an elementary school English academy in Japan who had his Facebook account hacked by fraudsters. Hackers created fake ads using his account, which drained his business of cash and left him with a damaged reputation.
The hackers initially targeted users who had weak passwords such as « qwerty » and « password. » Once they have access to an account, they review the top five most well-known friends and impersonate one of them and ask for an account reset code. The hackers then make use of an additional security feature that allows users to add trusted contacts to their account in the event they forget their password. They can ask their trusted friends to provide them with the one-time password to gain access to the account.
Selling stolen login credentials is another method hackers can gain access. A cache of 26 million Amazon, LinkedIn and Facebook passwords was recently found available on the dark web. Many of these passwords were hacked by a custom Trojan malware that affected millions of Windows-based computers between the years 2018 and app-ink.net/totally-free-antivirus-does-it-really-work 2020.
Users can protect themselves from attacks by checking that the address bar on their browser is Facebook and not another website. It is recommended that users use a password that combines letters, numbers, and spaces. They should not use it on other social media or emails accounts. Also, they should check their notifications for activity regularly. Twitter for instance, sends a notification when there’s an unusual login on an unfamiliar device or location.