Social media websites and services are more present than ever. Unfortunately, scams and malware can quickly spread among social media users, which makes these sites ideal locations for scammers to attack. If your account is compromised, it can be used to spread malware and scam messages to your network of friends or contacts.

 

• How do I identify and prevent attacks through social media?

  • Users should be cautious when posting text and images to social networking sites. Care should be taken to ensure posts would not reflect poorly on not only the poster, but other users as well. Users should also ensure posts do not contain too much information, which could lead to identity theft.

  • Users should use strong passwords for social networking accounts.

    • Strong passwords are at least sixteen characters in length.

    • Passwords should also contain upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters.

    • Passwords should not contain repetitive or sequential characters (ex. Aaa, 123, etc.)

  • Users should remain vigilant when receiving unsolicited files and hyperlinks from other social network users. Accessing these attachments could result in the unwanted infection of a computer system with malware.

  • There have been cyber-attacks designed to spread using the Facebook Messenger app. The malware uses the app to send messages with links to malicious websites. Users who visited the websites would become infected and their app would be infected and used to send more malicious messages.