Experts have told how the crooks and Blackmailers deceive users of social networks.
Excessive candor can result in loss of money and even prison.
Users of social networks, communicating in your account information about yourself: name, surname, email, phone number, store passwords for access to his page on the servers of the social networks, you can face serious trouble if their page is hacked.
There are numerous cases that showed fresh scandal over hacking the server with information about users of the popular social network “Vkontakte”. The Internet was for sale, a database of more than 100 million accounts with personal information of users for the price of just one bitcoin the virtual Internet currency, today, 1 bitcoin is equal to $570). Administration “Vkontakte”, denying the fact of the burglary, called the database outdated, but acknowledged that the fraudsters succeeded in 2011-2012 to collect a database of usernames and user passwords. More than 90% of the information is still relevant, though, is the assurance of the administration of VK, and all compromised passwords were changed by them forcibly.
THE GOAL OF HACKERS. As explained to us the head of the Department of police of National police of Ukraine Colonel Sergey Demediuk, typically, hackers sell the data to crooks who use other people’s accounts to make money. Even though they are not shy to capitalize on discovered “the strawberry”, which people primarily known to inadvertently share in closed groups “for their” thinking that others do not see.
“The most popular way is blackmail, for example, a person in a closed group publishes intimate photos or incriminating correspondence, after hacking it all falls to the attackers, says Demeduk. Hackers require a lot of money that these images will not appear in the public domain. But much more dangerous if your name will begin to publish ads about selling weapons or narcotics trafficking. When special services are interested in such “business”, they will come to the man, and he has no idea what his name committed the crime. Police said that the security services ultimately determines that the account was hacked, but “the victim spend a lot of nerves”. As to the Commission of serious crimes via hacked accounts — for example, to determine from the photo in the social network of the rich man and kidnap him or his family for ransom, or to steal from his house, according to Delduca, such cases are extremely rare.
And IT expert Igor Vilkov said that the database used in cyber warfare, for example, on behalf of the real user publishes the record criticizing the government, calling for the overthrow of the state construction Committee, violence. Also such a database of interest for those who deals with marketing for advertising and market research of sales”, — said Vilkov. He does not exclude the fact that the information about those who like to talk on the network on political topics, may be on sites like “Peacemaker”.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF. According to Vilkova, that their passwords and usernames have become available, blame the users themselves. “I would advise not to upload personal photo “I of the Maldives”, at least put apps like “who was on my page, different games, as they gather too much information about the user. And, of course, to create a strong password: minimum 8 characters, and it is better to 20, including big and small letters and special characters — punctuation, percentages, and never remember it in the computer,” says fork.
But the Director of an IT company Yury Savitsky believes that you can hack any password and advised to link your account to your mobile phone for SMS-authorization. “It’s a little inconvenient but the chance of losing accounts is reduced dramatically. Also, do not provide personal mail — it allows you to steal the password of social network account even to the layman using the function “forgot password”, and especially do not give a phone number. Sometimes, fraudsters had recovered the SIM card from the operator as lost and then on behalf of the subscriber made calls, hacking into the account and even withdraw money from Bank accounts”, says Sawicki.
