Social networks have become a central part of our daily routines. They allow us to chat with our friends and family, share our thoughts and conclusions, and access each user individual information. However, they are also a primary target for hackers and tools trying to infiltrate our information and security.
How can we protect ourselves from these risks? In this article, we will explain what infiltrations and hacks on social networks are, such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, among others, and what they mean for their users.
What are infiltrations and hacks on social networks?
Infiltrations and hacks on social networks are destructive exercises that try to access user records or profiles without their consent, take private information, circulate unapproved content or control the overall evaluation. These activities can have several objectives, for example:
Espionage
Some hackers try to obtain sensitive information from users, such as passwords, financial information, secret messages or intimate photos. This information can be used to force, coerce or extort by offering it to people interested in obtaining it.
Sabotage
Some hackers strive to cause damage and inconvenience to the user, for example by deleting their posts, changing their details, sending offensive or false messages to their contacts or making fake accounts in their name.
Propaganda or false opinions
The different reasons for account breaches may be political or ideological, trying to impact popular opinion through the dissemination of misleading or uncontrolled information. These attacks can affect the credibility and honesty of the impersonated person.
How do infiltrations and hacks on social networks affect users?
Infiltrations and hacks on social network accounts can have serious implications for users both personally and collectively. Some consequences may be:
Decrease in confidentiality and privacy: Users may see their own information compromised which can generate embarrassment fears or lack of security that affect their daily lives.
Loss of security: Users may be victims of frauds scams or extortions which could really endanger their financial assets and seriously their real reliability or that of their families.
Spread of false data: Users may be affected by false or misleading information which could generate disorder duplicity and lack of truthfulness in their data. Similarly, they could lose the ability to identify between solid and reliable sources and those that are fraudulent.
What measures can we take to avoid infiltrations and hacks on social networks?
Infiltrations and hacks on social networks are worrying issues that are difficult to completely eliminate. Be that as it may there are some recommendations that we can implement to reduce the risk of falling into these attacks. Some of these actions are:
Protect our passwords
We must verify the authenticity of the accounts or profiles we follow or interact with. We must also report or block accounts or profiles that seem suspicious or malicious to us. In addition, we must avoid clicking on links or downloading files that come from unknown or dubious sources.
Be careful with your information
We must review the privacy and security settings of each social network we use. We must also limit access to our personal or sensitive information only to people we know and trust. Likewise, we must avoid posting or sending information that could compromise us or harm us.
Protect your identity
We should check the credibility of the records or profiles that we follow or associate with. Likewise, we must report or block records or profiles that we consider fraudulent or harmful. On the other hand, we must avoid clicking on links without properly confirming the source or downloading files that come to us from questionable sources.
Additional measures to protect our social media accounts
To further safeguard our protection on the Web, it is important to follow some security recommendations. For example, we could use a “secret key manager” to help us create and remember secure and complex passwords for each record.
We can also start with “two-factor authentication“, which adds an additional layer of security by requiring a code or biometric verification to access our records.
Also, it is reasonable to use a “VPN” when interacting with public Wi-Fi networks, to prevent third parties from intercepting our data through a “man in the middle” attack.
In the same way, we must take into account the information that we share on social media and how we share it, occasionally reviewing or confirming the security settings of our records.
Final considerations
While it means progress to reach high levels of protection on our accounts, we must remain vigilant, and it is vital to understand that hackers and penetration tools are constantly evolving.
The growing advancement of these attacks implies that even users without specialized information can use online tools to bypass the security and protection of social media accounts with just a link web.
Therefore, it is important to stay alert, updating with all official security patches that arise, constantly monitoring our security configuration to control potential risks.
