As far as basic aspects, many hackers still depend on insufficient security practices to succeed. Nonetheless, terrible website security also leaves customer data vulnerable, and even strong passwords won’t prevent attacks and breaches. Some of the most worrying attacks of 2015 involved social engineering for bypassing two-factor authentication. Utilizing the password-reset system and posing as Google through texting, the Gmail scam took advantage of the user’s trust in an established brand to break into email accounts without raising suspicion.

Requiring interaction, social networking scams and manual sharing were the most common pathways for social media attacks last year, building on the successful cyber scams of 2014. The following lists the most common methods:

Fake Apps – Users are tricked into subscribing to fake applications that seems to be part of the social network, and it then steals credentials and other personal data.

Fake Plugin – Users are invited to install a plugin to view a video, but it is malicious and may spread by re-posting the fake video message to a user’s profile page without consent.

Fake Offering – Social network users are invited to join fictitious groups or fake events by luring them with incentives, then requiring them to provide credentials.

Likejacking – Users are deceived into clicking fake “Like” buttons, when then install malware and spread scams through their newsfeeds.

Manual Sharing – Relies on the assistance of victims to spread scams to friends and colleagues by sending provocative videos, irresistible offers, or intriguing messages.

Social Engineering Safeguards

According to a study, cyber crime takes $575 billion from the world’s economy. People are needed to take responsibility for security in order to slow the increasing costs of internet scams. Users should be more cautious regarding those they follow on social media. Bots appear increasingly to be authentic human beings and are more difficult to detect. Below are a set of rules to follow for protection on Twitter:

Check for Verified Badge: Find this before following a celebrity. This confirms that Twitter authenticated the true owner of an account.

Numbers Are Deceiving: The number of followers can be faked, so do not base your decision on following a random user on this metric.

Suspect New Twitter Followers: If an unknown person follows you, do not reciprocate without investigating. If their re-tweets appears to be spam, they are probably bots.

Our privacy is valuable and is worth protecting. For companies and their employees, this demands taking a security approach that involves regular training in cyber security, policies, and practices.

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