How Hackers Are Getting Access to Facebook Accounts

When someone has been hacked, it can damage their reputation and cost them thousands of dollars in ad revenue. That’s what happened to Dale Berry, the owner of an elementary school English academy in Japan who had his Facebook account hacked by fraudsters. Hackers ran fake ads on the account, which stripped the business of its funds and caused him to lose his reputation.

The hackers initially targeted users who had weak passwords like “qwerty” and “password.” Once they have access to an account, they scan the top five most well-known friends and impersonate one of them to request for a password reset number. They then take advantage of the security feature that allows users to add friends as trusted contacts in case they lose their password and they can request those trusted contacts to provide the one-time password required to gain access to the account.

Another method for hackers to gain access accounts is to buy stolen login information. Recently the cache of 26,000,000 Amazon, LinkedIn, and Facebook passwords were uncovered for sale on the dark web. Many of them were released via custom Trojan malware that infiltrated a number of Windows-based computers between the years 2018 to 2020.

Users can stay safe from attacks by constantly making sure that the address bar of their browser is Facebook and not another website. They should also make sure to use an account password that includes numbers spaces, letters and spaces and never use the same password for other email or social media accounts. Additionally users should keep track of their activity alerts regularly. Twitter is an example. It sends a notification poolhost app when there’s a suspicious login from an unfamiliar device or location.