Hacking can ruin someone’s reputation and cost them thousands in lost advertising revenue. This was the case for Dale Berry, the owner of an elementary school English academy in Japan who had his Facebook account hacked by fraudsters. Hackers ran fraudulent ads using his account, which drained the business of its funds and left him with a damaged reputation.

The hackers first targeted people who had weak passwords like «qwerty» and «password.» Once they have access to an account, they check the top five most well-known friends and impersonate one of them to ask for the password reset code. They then use the security feature that allows people to add friends as trusted contacts in case they lose their password, and can ask those trusted friends to provide the one-time password needed to gain access to the account.

Buying stolen login information is another way hackers gain access. Recently the cache of 26,000,000 Amazon, LinkedIn, and Facebook passwords were uncovered app-ink.net/virtual-deal-room-software-can-help-to-estimate-enterprise-value-during-ma-activity for sale on the dark web. Many of these passwords were hacked by custom Trojan malware which was able to infect millions of Windows-based computers between 2018 and 2020.

Users can be protected from these attacks by making sure that the address bar on their browser is Facebook and not some other website. They should also make sure to use an account password that includes numbers spaces, letters, and spaces and never duplicate the same password across other social media or email accounts. Additionally, they should check their activity notifications regularly. Twitter is an example. It sends a notification when there’s an unusual login from a new device or location.