Escalating Facebook hacks; how to fix them

The users of Facebook have drastically increased during the time of pandemic. People were forced to remain in their homes and they had no other entertainment than movies, TV shows and social media. Communication became easier through Facebook. People shared their thoughts, ideas and had debates & healthy discussion about different topics. Equally, the cyber-attacks and the scams against Facebook increased. Facebook turned into a perfect breeding platform for different cyber hacks.

As per the current status, Facebook has around 2.8 billion active users, which means the hackers have a vast number of possibilities to exploit. Even after implementing security protocols to prevent the leak of data, Facebook suffered a data breach in 2019 which compromised the information of around 30 million users and 500,000 phone numbers.

Although Facebook decided to strengthen its security and installed tight safety measures, the hackers were still able to hack individual accounts.

But how do they do this? Are you vulnerable to Facebook hacks?

As per the statistics, around 160,000 Facebook profiles are being hacked daily. The report says that if proper preventive measures are not taken, the number will go on increasing and our personal information will not be safe anymore.

In most of the cases, the security team of Facebook is not responsible for the privacy breach. The hackers use various sophisticated and technical tools to hijack people’s account by overcoming the security protocols. Before hacking a person’s account, they conduct a detailed study about the person and they take advantage of the target’s social and psychological naivety.

To hack a person’s account, it’s not mandatory that the hacker should directly hack his profile. Instead, he finds a friend of the target, hacks him and through him he reaches the target’s account. The hackers can hack you using your influential friends or followers.

While thinking in a broad sense, no one is safe in Facebook. Even the complete security ensuring platform like Twitter is vulnerable to cyber threats. Public figures, celebrities, politicians, activists etc. are being constantly targeted by the cyber hackers.

Compared to other social media platforms, Facebook tends to connect people who are close to each other.

According to the survey of Facebook, around 120 million accounts are reported to be fake. By the initiative of the developers, they have taken detected and taken down around 234.6 million spam contents.

The most common happening in Facebook is that the scammer impersonates as a friend or family friend to compromise the account of the target. In these cases, the target’s connections are compromised before they attack their targets.

When the target is a Facebook-business related victim, then his business will be adversely affected by the attack.

How do the cyber criminals take over a Facebook account?

• Phishing and social engineering attacks
• Faulty links and spyware
• To hack the passwords, hackers execute Brute Force attack.
• Password and username leak.

How can you prevent the hacking of your Facebook account?

• Never click or open sceptical links or attachments.
• Never save your login credentials in your phone or any other device.
• When you create a password, include letters, numbers and other characters to make it strong.
• Never disclose personal informations like email address and phone number in public platforms like Facebook.
• Never login from unauthorized websites.
• Never login to Facebook from public networks and Wi-Fi’s.
• Keep your login credentials safe and never share it with anyone.