Hacking can damage a person’s reputation and cost them thousands of dollars in lost advertising revenue. Dale Berry is the owner of an English preschool in Japan. He was the victim of a hacking attack on his Facebook account hacked. Hackers used his account to create fraudulent ads, draining the business of his owner and destroying his reputation.
The hackers initially targeted users with weak passwords, such as «qwerty» and «password.» Once they have access to an account, they check the top five most popular friends and impersonate one of them to request for the password reset code. They then make use of a security feature that allows people to add friends as trusted contacts in case they lose their password and can ask those trusted contacts to provide the one-time password in order to gain access to the account.
Another method hackers can gain access to accounts is by purchasing stolen login information. Recently there was a cache of 26 million Amazon, LinkedIn, and Facebook passwords was discovered available on the dark web. Many of these passwords were hacked by a custom Trojan malware that infected millions of Windows-based computer between 2018 and 2020.
Users can stay safe from attacks by constantly checking that the address bar on their browser is Facebook and not another website. Users should use a password combining numbers, letters, and spaces. They should not reuse it for any other email or social media accounts. Additionally users should keep track of their activity notifications regularly. Twitter for instance, sends out a notification whenever there’s an unusual login on app-ink.net/totally-free-antivirus-does-it-really-work a new device or location.
