Introduction
Social media is a dangerous place for your online privacy and security. If you don’t think so, just look at the number of high-profile hacks that have happened in recent years: from Snapchat to Twitter and Facebook, there’s no shortage of juicy data to be found on these platforms. The good news is that most social media breaches happen because people don’t use two-factor authentication or other security features like Google Vault which can help keep hackers out (and keep your information safe).
According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, 81% of hacking-related breaches leveraged stolen and/or weak passwords.
The first line of defense against hacking is your password. But even with a strong password, some accounts are inevitably breached. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, 81% of hacking-related breaches leveraged stolen and/or weak passwords. If a hacker gets into your account by guessing or trying different combinations of letters, numbers, and characters until he finds one that works, you could be vulnerable from then on—and it doesn’t matter if your password looks like gibberish because hackers can just ask again until they find an answer that works.
To make sure someone isn’t snooping on your social media accounts (and perhaps gaining access to personal information), use two-factor authentication whenever possible—that means using something more complicated than just typing in a PIN code when accessing an app like Facebook or Twitter through their website or mobile app store page (see below). This will help prevent unauthorized access while still allowing users full access when they need it most: during those times when they’re posting something important online!
In June of 2018, 80 million MyFitnessPal accounts were hacked, making it one of the biggest hacks of the year.
In June of 2018, 80 million MyFitnessPal accounts were hacked, making it one of the biggest hacks of the year. The company announced that they had found “unauthorized access” to its network and said that they had taken steps to restore access for all affected users.
The hack was first discovered by Kromtech Security Center who noticed suspicious activity on June 20th—the same day their report was published in Wired magazine (which quickly went viral). The team analyzed the data and found that hackers were able to gain access through email addresses obtained from other websites such as Twitter or Reddit accounts. They also discovered that some people had been victims multiple times over several months before being notified by email about changes made within their account settings which included passwords or usernames being sent via text message instead of being sent by email normally used by users when logging into their accounts through mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets running iOS operating system versions 11/12+.
Back in 2013, Adobe had a security breach that involved 38 million users’ account information being lifted.
Adobe had a security breach in 2013 that involved 38 million users’ account information being lifted. The vulnerability was caused by a vulnerability in Adobe’s ColdFusion software, which allows hackers to gain access to your personal data and use it for nefarious purposes.
The attack occurred in March 2013 when hackers exploited an existing bug in ColdFusion’s code to steal user names and passwords from an online database owned by Adobe. The company quickly patched the problem, but not before thousands of people were affected by this hack—and many more still hadn’t yet become aware that their accounts had been compromised!
A data breach at Target in late 2013 affected 40 million credit cards and 70 million other pieces of customer information.
The Target data breach was one of the largest data breaches in history. It affected customers who shopped at Target stores between November 27 and December 15, 2013. The hackers stole credit card information, emails and names of over 110 million customers.
In 2013, a hacker accessed Snapchat’s database and released data on 4.6 million Snapchat users including their usernames and phone numbers.
In 2013, a hacker accessed Snapchat’s database and released data on 4.6 million Snapchat users including their usernames and phone numbers. The company had previously said that only some of its users were affected by this hack—but it seems that no one was safe from the prying eyes of hackers anymore.
Back in 2016, over 32 million Twitter login credentials were found for sale on the dark web – thought to have been stolen by malware infecting browsers.
In 2016, over 32 million Twitter login credentials were found for sale on the dark web – thought to have been stolen by malware infecting browsers.
This is a common occurrence with social media accounts because they are more often targeted than other types of accounts. Even if you use a strong password and enable two-factor authentication on your social media account, you still might get hacked.
The good news is that there are plenty of ways to protect yourself from these types of attacks:
There are many other high-profile hacks that have involved social media accounts over the last few years which you can read about here.
- In 2017, hackers gained access to the Twitter account of Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization.
- In 2018, they compromised the Facebook account of British Prime Minister Theresa May.
- And in 2019, they hacked into and took over Oprah Winfrey’s Instagram account with a post that read “Oprah 2020” (the hashtag was #Oprah2020).
Most social media hacks happen because people don’t make use of security features like two-factor authentication.
The best way to protect your social media accounts is to use two-factor authentication. This is a security feature that requires two pieces of information to log in, like a code on the screen or a text message from your phone. Two-factor authentication can be used with most major social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
You can choose what information you want to use as your second factor when setting up this feature—it could be something as simple as entering an email address instead of entering in the password each time you sign in with your account (or perhaps even not having one at all).
Conclusion
Social media accounts are one of the most popular places for hackers to go after because it’s easy to get a lot of data in one place. They also tend to have low security measures, so if you don’t use them properly then you could find yourself up next on the ‘shame list’ for cyber criminals!
