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Thursday, November 7, 2024

How Hackers Use Social Media To Access Your Accounts

How hackers use social media to access your accounts? Hackers use social media sites as fertile beds as information about you. Think hard about what you share on social media sites. Now think about the passwords you use to access your accounts.

How Hackers Use Social Media To Access Your Accounts

Information such as your dog’s name, the name of your children, partner, or parents is generally posted along with pictures and videos. If you are using that same information to create passwords, now would be an excellent time to change them.

Don't use your dogs name as a password

Don’t use your pets name as a password

Look at it from the fraudster’s point of view. If your goal is gathering as much personal information about a stranger as possible, one obvious and easy place to start would be social media accounts. Once enough data is collected, access to personal accounts and especially cell phones becomes much more accessible. And the goal of accessing your mobile phone account is simple.

A high percentage of people now do at least some of their banking through mobile apps. Take a moment and let that fact sink in.

How hackers use social media to access your accounts?

A high percentage of people now do at least some of their banking through mobile apps. Take a moment and let that fact sink in.

Hackers use social media to access your accounts by what is now known as social engineering. To accomplish this, they can begin with as little information as your name and phone number.

One of the latest types of hack plaguing the telecommunications industry is called a SIM swap. Fraud through social engineering happens typically by phone, but the hackers are now utilizing text messaging and online chats more every day. The process usually begins with hackers using the information gained on social media to call your telecommunications company’s customer service department. They will be persuasive and charm an unsuspecting customer service representative into believing that they are the account holder.

How hackers swap SIM cards

How hackers use social media to access your accounts?

Once the hacker has access to your phone account, they will request to do the SIM swap. Then, once they have successfully swapped out your SIM card for their own, they will have immediate access to any mobile apps you have downloaded. They will also have access to any user names and passwords you have saved intentionally or not deleted from your phone’s history.

hacker or criminal use phishing to steal online money

How Hackers Use Social Media To Access Your Accounts

Also, it is essential to remember that hackers can call the company over and over again. They do not have to succeed on just one call ultimately. They can continue to call, each time speaking with a different representative to gain information little by little until they succeed. At this point, the victim is usually unaware that they are being hacked because any potential alerts are being directed to the hacker, not the legitimate person on the account.

How Hackers Use Social Media To Access Your Accounts

Now the hacker can transfer any or all of the funds in your bank accounts wherever they please. Also, if the transaction is red-flagged by the banking institutions, they will be contacting the hacker to verify the transaction instead of the genuine account holder. By employing social engineering techniques, the hacker will generally have enough information to answer security questions. With full access to the accounts, the rate of success is alarming high. Some recent reports have identified fraud and identity theft claims in the tens of thousands just since the beginning of this year.

How Hackers Use Social Media To Access Your Accounts

How Hackers Use Social Media To Access Your Accounts

A few recommendations to try to safeguard your personal information and accounts are very straightforward. First, do not ever give out personal information on the phone or over the internet. When you receive an email or call from your banking institution, do not immediately respond. Hang up or exit the email, google your bank’s contact information and initiate a call using their published information. If the contact was legitimate, their telephone representatives should be able to assist you with whatever the reason was for the initial contact.

How hackers use social media to access your accounts?

Next, spend some time checking and adjusting the privacy settings on your electronic devices and all of the social media sites you have downloaded. Install a privacy protection program on your devices and run scans frequently to eliminate malware that has crept in unknowingly.

How to protect your digital privacy

Change your passwords and not include any information that someone would know by looking through your social media sites or your wallet.

Take the time to change to longer passwords that include random numbers and symbols.

Strong and weak password

How Hackers Use Social Media To Access Your Accounts

Please do not create a spreadsheet or save them on your device. Write them down and keep them in a secure location. And finally, to make it even more difficult for a hacker to get to your money, do not download any mobile financial apps. If you need to do remote banking, opt for telephone banking instead. The less information you put on your phone, the safer you will be in the long run.

Read more – How to Protect Yourself From Apps Accessing Your Personal Information

For more information please visit Report Fraud website.

29 COMMENTS

  1. Excellent information and great material to deepen and improve our knowledge about the world, very entertaining reading, Thank you.

  2. Wow, I did not think that this way they could invade my privacy, although it is not good to always think that someone is going to hack your account … Although I do think that we should improve our security a bit. Excellent post! it has been helpful and enjoyable!

  3. This information is excellent to be aware of hacker attacks. It is a good content suitable for all audiences and the truth is very useful because today there are many dangers on the internet and it is good that people educate themselves

  4. Thank you for sharing this valuable information. it is really very important to know this to avoid getting hacked.

  5. Excellent information and great material to deepen and improve our knowledge about the world, very entertaining reading, Thank you. so much for sharing this magnificent work

  6. With millions of hackers lurking in cyberspace and ready to exploit any mistake you make, it’s essential not to let this useful information pass you by. Knowledge is power!

  7. Well, this is a reality that all internet users have to take into account and who often work or spend their free time in it, it is to create a conscience to protect themselves from these cybernetic pirates that what they want is to cause harm to vulnerable people .

  8. I love the Post, excellent work doing both editing and material, continue with this good content, I hope you grow even more

  9. No se puede tener nada en la web. No hasta que pase a ser de autenticación incorrompible. No pongan su vida en la web. Todo lo importante tiene que ir a papel

  10. Thank you very much for making this post, it really helped me, it was very helpful, I hope other people take advantage of it as much as I do.

  11. Hackers are constantly learning to steal or impersonate identities, it is important not to share sensitive information on any social network

  12. It’s amazing how much information can be obtained from a person by researching details of his personal life. We definitely have to be more and more careful in how we protect our information.

  13. Amigo esta es una gran realidad actualmente aunque no se quiera aceptar, porque comunmente colocamos el nombre de alguien o de nuestras mascotas mas una fecha especial en nuestras contraseñas etc y etc, gracias por tan valiosa informacion !

  14. totally true, we must take care of our social networks, the internet is full of traps and we must know how to detect them. good post!

  15. The article is excellent, because it makes public knowledge certain tips to be able to keep your accesses safe to a certain point, because all information uploaded to the cloud is no longer private, the reason is because everything leaves a digital trail that hackers can follow, continue.

  16. grateful and totally pleased to get to this article, your requests are very interesting and help in many aspects, in my case it is, I will keep in touch for more publications of this quality and thus be able to continue learning from a great teacher like you

  17. good article. Hackers are definitely at the forefront in terms of tricks and methods of theft and fraud, we must be careful with any electronic operation that we do outside our home especially. we must be aware of our data at all times

  18. I find the information very interesting to protect our accounts on social networks, thanks for all the recommendations and suggestions … I agree with all of them, especially not to put the names of our pets or addresses, or identity numbers !!!

  19. im very happy with this post, have a information thats i need. very good redaction. thanks for share and keep it way

  20. Totally true, it really helped me … great material to deepen and improve our knowledge about the world, very entertaining, Thank you.

  21. This information is of great help to me, I really like the topic of hackers, the truth has always caught my attention, excellent.

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