Hacking can damage a person’s reputation and cost them thousands in lost advertising revenue. This is what happened to Dale Berry, the owner of an elementary school English academy in Japan who got his Facebook account compromised by fraudsters. Hackers used his account to display fraudulent ads, draining his company and destroying his reputation.
The hackers first targeted those who had weak passwords such as “qwerty” and “password.” Once they have access to an account, they review the top five most popular friends and impersonate one of them to request for a password reset number. The hackers then use an option to protect themselves that allows people to add trusted contacts to their account in the event they forget their password. They can ask these trusted friends to give them the one-time password to gain access to the account.
Another way hackers gain access to accounts is through the purchase of stolen login information. Recently an inventory of 26 million Amazon, LinkedIn, and Facebook passwords was discovered for sale on dark web. A large portion of these passwords were taken by a custom Trojan malware that caused widespread infection of Windows-based computers between the years of 2018 and 2020.
Users can stay safe from attacks by constantly making sure that the address bar of their browser is Facebook and not a different website. They should also choose an account password that includes numbers spaces, letters and spaces and never reuse the same password for other social media or email accounts. Additionally they should monitor their activity notifications on a regular basis. Twitter is an example. It sends a notification when there’s a suspicious login from the new device or from a different location.