HACKING ON THE RISE
Social networking sites are booming in popularity on the internet. They provide a great way for users to express their thoughts and personality, keep in touch with friends and family, and share photos and videos of their personal lives. It might seem like a great convenience and even lots of fun, but there is a nasty dark side that most users are unaware of.
Listing your personal details and activities on the internet can attract attention from the wrong kind of people. Your friends aren’t the only ones who have access to view these details, as experienced professionals have the know how to get access as well.
Hackers can quite easily get at your account information. If many of the world’s biggest and most secretive agencies can be hacked, such as the FBI, NASA and the Catholic Church, then surely social networking sites can be hacked into as well. In fact, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, the three biggest social networking sites in the world, have suffered many attacks over the past few years. Apart from the hacking, personal details left on these sites are more vulnerable since they are favourites of the hackers.
BAD APPS
A major problem for Facebook users has come from the installation of ‘Facebook Apps’, which are essentially mini-games on the website. Many apps (applications) have been tremendously popular, but in order to use them you need to allow the application access to your personal details. The problem lies with the fact that the apps are developed by third party software programmers, rather than Facebook themselves. This means that the developers have the opportunity to get up to mischief and program the apps to do other things apart from only accessing your details.
Some Facebook users have been caught out by apps which have allowed the programmers to take over their account or even gain access to their computer. Hackers who gain control over others computers can do a lot of damage, ranging from meddling with your menu setting and using your camera and microphone to deleting your contents from your hard drive or installing software to capturing your banking login information.
HACKERS HAVING FUN
Another great risk is when you use the same email account and password for more than one website. A Christian dating website was recently hacked and it allowed the hackers to get a full list of peoples email addresses and passwords. Unfortunately for many of the websites members, they used the same email address and password on Facebook, which allowed the hackers to access their accounts.
The hackers then put the details on the internet, allowing both internet criminals and pranksters access to the victims account details. What the pranksters did next was absolutely hilarious, changing people’s status comments and posting funny comments to the victim’s friend’s walls and photos. But an even worse fate awaited those who had their account details provided to the internet criminals.
INTERNET CRIMINAL SCAMS
Many people are not worried about what they put as personal details on their social networking accounts. After all, what can people do if they know your name, location, date of birth and employer? That’s at a bare minimum, with some people listing email addresses, Skype ID’s and phone numbers. It’s true that there aren’t any critical details such as credit card numbers or drivers licence numbers, but nevertheless, the details listed are the first step towards identity theft.
A compromised account usually falls victim to the ‘London Scam’. This is where all friends receive a message saying that the victim has encountered a problem and needs financial help. There are many different versions of the scam, with one reading along the lines of – ‘Help, I am holidaying in London and was robbed at gunpoint last night. Everything was stolen and I need you to send me $500 ASAP so I can get home.’
This type of scam was a favourite of the Nigerian scammers who hacked into email accounts, but social networking sites have allowed this scam to be taken to a new level. When the internet criminals gain access to an account, they lie dormant watching the activity of the user. Then, when the user decides to take an overseas holiday, they normally advise their social network friends. After they fly overseas, it affords the perfect opportunity for the internet criminals to launch the London Scam, albeit modified to match their destination country.
HOME BURGLARIES
Many social networking site users seem to be caught up in a race to add friends, with many of them admitting to adding people they hardly know or have met only once. Some even go as far as accepting friend requests from strangers, who could no doubt be criminals in disguise. These tactics place them at great risk, as many so called ‘friends’ could be desperate enough to resort to crime.
One of the popular tactics is to monitor their friend’s accounts to see when they might be leaving the house, and then robbing it while they are away. People love to comment when they are going out to catch a movie, watch a football game or see a concert. This has become such a problem that many insurance companies are considering increasing home and contents cover premiums for social networking users.
REAL WORLD PREDATORS
We have previously written on the dangers faced by social networking site users when they post comments or upload drunken photographs (See – Social Networking – A Great Way to Win and Lose Jobs). Employers can either sack employees or refuse to hire them based on what information they find, but there are new predators lurking who are trying to view the same information.
One such predator is the tax offices. Nothing says ‘I’m not paying enough tax’ than a photograph of your new BMW or holiday to the Swiss Alps. But mainly they are using it to track down money from people on the run. In a definite scare tactic campaign, the US authorities have recently released information about how they caught a few tax offenders. There was a story about a DJ who posted information on which party he would be working at, and another where a man announced he would be returning to his home town and old employer, for which the Tax Office had those details.
PAY THAT MONEY
The tax collectors are not the only ones looking to catch people who owe money. Debt collectors are using the same tactics to serve documents on people they can’t otherwise find. In what is suspected to be a world first, an Australian couple were served legal documents over Facebook for a claim on their unpaid housing loan.
Lawyers from Canberra law firm Meyer Vandenberg have successfully persuaded a judge to allow the move. After receiving no reply from their previous correspondences through post and email, the judge allowed the move after the date of births, email addresses and friends lists provided enough evidence that they were the people in question. The fact that the two loan defaulters had each other as friends did not help their cause.
BE CAREFUL
The important thing to remember is to be careful with your social networking accounts. Use a different password for each account and make sure it is different from the one for your email address. Never accept friend requests from strangers and limit what information can be viewed by ‘acquaintances’ who are not strong friends. Also try to limit what personal information you list in your profile. If you are using Facebook, think twice before using the Facebook apps. Follow these points and you should dramatically reduce the possibility of running into trouble.