Hackers Are Selling Your Social Media Data
.png)
Social media companies are failing to clamp down on scammers selling people's personal details through their platforms, an investigation from consumer watchdog Which? has shown. It found 50 profiles, pages and groups on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram offering stolen credit-card details, and Netflix and Uber Eats accounts. Much of the content had remained on the platforms after being reported.Facebook is a magnet for cyber criminals who see its nearly 1.6 billion monthly active users as 1.6 billion tempting targets and Facebook scams are the most common online attack method, according to the 2016 edition of technology firm Cisco’s Annual Security Report, with 33,681,000 examples identified by the company’s researchers, just ahead of JavaScript attacks in its malware chart.
Another point raised by the Report says, ‘In the post–Edward Snowden era, the geopolitical landscape for Internet governance has changed dramatically.... There is now pervasive uncertainty surrounding the free flow of information across borders. The landmark case brought by the Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems against the social networking giant Facebook had perhaps the biggest impact, leading the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to overturn the US Safe Harbor Agreement on October 6, 2015.’
Which? carried out an investigation before the coronavirus lockdown and found one Facebook post revealing a Yorkshire man's: full name, date of birth, address, mobile phone number, credit-card number, security code and expiry data and his bank name and sort code. According to Which? the post had been live for four months.
Only after Which? had requested a review of that decision had the post been removed - and, even then, the group in which it had been posted had remained active. In response, Facebook, which also owns Instagram, told the BBC that it had now acted to take down all the content.
Scam Tactics
On Twitter, investigators found fraudsters offering:
- the full credit-card details of someone with a "£13,000 plus balance" for £100 - or three sets of card details for £200
- a fake passport for £3,000
- Which? said it had found the content simply by searching for slang terms for fraud.
Twitter's algorithms had then even suggested similar accounts via its "Who to follow" section. Twitter said it was against its rules "to use scam tactics to obtain money or private financial information....here we identify violations of our rules, we take robust enforcement action," it said.
A Which? spokes is reported to have said "It's astonishing that social media sites make it so easy for criminals to trade people's personal and financial information, particularly as fraud is such a prevalent crime that can have devastating consequences." and Which? has called on Facebook and Twitter "to take stronger action to prevent their sites becoming a safe haven for scammers" and "work with the financial industry and police to address serious flaws with their platforms".
As Facebook and Twitter evolve so do the cyber criminals and this process will not stop and so your cyber security is very important for saving your information and money.
You Might Also Read:
