If someone is hacked, it can damage their reputation and cost thousands of dollars in lost ad revenue. Dale Berry is the owner of an English preschool in Japan. He had his Facebook account compromised. Hackers used his account to run fraudulent ads, draining his business and destroying his reputation.
Hackers first target those who have weak passwords such as “qwerty” or “password.” They then pretend to be a friend and request a code to reset the password. They then take advantage of an option to secure people to add their friends as trusted contacts in case they lose their password, and can ask those trusted friends to give them the one-time password in order to gain access to the account.
Buying stolen login information is another way hackers gain access. Recently an inventory of 26 million Amazon, LinkedIn, and Facebook passwords were uncovered available on the dark web. Many of these passwords were stolen by a custom Trojan malware which caused widespread infection of Windows-based computers between the years of 2018 and avg zen vs avg free 2020.
Users can avoid these attacks by always checking that the address bar of their browser is Facebook and not some other website. Users should use a password which combines numbers, letters and spaces, and never reuse it for another social media or emails accounts. Also, they should check their notifications regularly for activity. Twitter, for example, sends a notification when there’s an unusual login on a new device or location.