Skip to main content

Is it that easy to hack a Facebook account?

In one word it's simply a NO.

You must have seen many apps and websites saying "hack someone's Facebook account with one click" or so fooling you and asking you for bucks. But believe me, they are pure bullshit.

Facebook is, undoubtedly, the most popular social networking website with more than 1 billion active users. Due to its popularity, many hackers (or should I say crackers?) are actively involved in hacking Facebook accounts of unsuspecting users. This article outlines the many strategies that such hackers use to gain access to Facebook accounts of hundreds of users each day and how you can stop them from hacking your account.

Ways in which accounts may be hacked:

  • Email Address Hack: I have always been puzzled by people's leniency in this matter. Most people leave their email addresses visible on their Facebook profiles. All a hacker then needs to do is know your name and he will be conveniently shown your email address at your profile. Also, most people share their email ids everywhere. How easily a hacker can then hack your Facebook account (and everything else associated with that email id) if he 'guesses' your password (if you use a weak password) or answers your security question! Here are some tricks you can use to protect yourself from this vulnerability.
  • Phishing:  It is one of the easiest ways to trick users into giving out their login credentials. All a hacker does is setup a webpage similar in design to that of the Facebook homepage, attach a server sided script to track the username and password entered and store it in a log. Sending people emails stating that someone tagged a photo of them on Facebook in the same format as Facebook and giving a link below to the phishing website further reduces the chances of it being detected as a fake. Sometimes, spam Facebook apps, like those promising to tell who viewed your Facebook profile, automatically post links to phishing websites. A new trend amongst phishers is creating Facebook look-a-like widgets for stealing user's login credentials.
  • Keylogging through Keyloggers: Keylogger is a type of computer virus that tracks key strokes. Keyloggers can be installed remotely on a computer system by a cracker to record all the activity that is going on the victim's computer. Keylogging gets more easy if the hacker has physical access to the victim's computer.
  • Social engineering: Social engineering involves using any trick to fool the user into making himself vulnerable to exploits. This could involve anything from sending spoof emails, pretending to be from Facebook, telling you to change your password to 12345678 to a hacker maliciously getting out the answer to your security question in a friendly chat or discussion.

    • How to be safe:

    • Hide your Email Address from everyone by going to Edit Profile>Contact and Basic Info>Clicking on the gear icon beside your email address> checking 'Only Me' if you have not done so already.
    • Change your primary email address to a one that is only known to you by going to Settings>Email> and changing your primary email to the new one (known only to you) and removing your previous email address.
    • For additional security, when in Account Settings, enable Login alerts to receive notifications and emails when a new computer or mobile device logs into your account.
    • Also, enable Login Approvals to receive a code on your mobile phone to login whenever your Facebook account is accessed from an unknown device. Login Approvals will need you to have added a mobile number to your Facebook account.
    • Moreover, enable two factor authentication to access your email addresses on your email provider's website as well to make sure that no hacker can exploit them to hack into your Facebook account.
    • At all costs, avoid clicking on suspicious links. Moreover, always check the URL in the address bar before signing in. Avoid logging in through various "Facebook widgets" offered by websites and blogs. Instead, use Facebook's homepage to sign in. Always try to use Safe Search on search engines while searching. If you do manage to get phished, report the website so that others may get a warning before visiting it.
    • Install a good antivirus and update it frequently. Do not click on suspicious links and avoid downloading illegal software. Also, avoid installing free toolbars and other such spam software. Always scan third-person's flash and pen drives before using them on your computer.
    • Stay aware during chats and discussions. Use a tough security question, preferably one whose answer you would never disclose to anyone. Moreover, Facebook, or any other company for that matter, will never ask you to change your password to 12345678 or do something as silly as asking you to send out your login details to prove that you are an active user. Always think before taking actions and your e-life on Facebook will be safe from hackers looking to hack Facebook accounts.

    Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    Best Gaming Laptops You Can Buy Right Now

    Gaming Laptops are no joke. They pack some serious performance under the hood that even some mid-range desktops cannot match. They’re often considered as huge, heavy and fat machines with red and blue paint all over their chassis, but that’s not the case at present. Over the past few years, manufacturers have introduced laptops packing more and more power in a thinner and lighter chassis. If you take a look at a gaming laptop from ten years ago and compare to anything from the present, I can guarantee that your jaw will drop and you’ll start wondering how technology has improved over the decade. Here are the top 10 performance grade laptops to make your selection from. 1. ASUS ROG G701VI Gaming Laptop  Unlocked Intel i7-7820HK processor 64GB of DDR4 RAM (yes, you read that right!) 1 TB NVMe SSD Overclockable GTX 1080 desktop class graphics card 17.3-inch 120Hz Full HD IPS panel with NVIDIA G-Sync 2. Alienware 17 R4 Intel i7-7820HK processor (overclocked up to 4.4 GHz) 32GB of DDR4 ...
    25 comments
    Read more

    Now you can whisper to Alexa

    Amazon’s Alexa can now listen and respond to whispers, and she will whisper back. Now first, this might set off another wave of anxiety for privacy advocates. Your virtual assistant is not only spying on you and potentially recording or storing your conversations, now she can do even if you tried to keep your voice down. Amazon’s team just made that sensitive microphone function even more acutely. Video demonstrating Alexa whisper: So, why do we need to whisper in the first place? Will it come handy in anyway? Yes. If you whisper, “Echo, play a lullaby,” for the infant who’s almost asleep in your arms, Echo will whisper back, “Here’s a station for lullabies from your Amazon Music library,” instead of screaming at  full startling volume. What's more? Whisper is not the only important feature that will come to Amazon Echo devices this year, we also have bunch of new ones. Guard : Guard will let you say, “Alexa, I’m leaving,” and the device will automatically acti...
    Post a Comment
    Read more

    How to verify your downloaded files using MD5 Checksum on Windows?

    MD5 stands for Message Digest version 5 . The MD5 algorithm takes a file (the “message”) of any size, and reduces it down to a code that looks like this: “ac30ce5b07b0018d65203fbc680968f5″ (the “digest”). The brilliant thing about the MD5 algorithm is that if the message changes by so much as a single byte, it will produce a completely different digest. An MD5 sum is a string of letters and numbers that acts like a fingerprint for a file. If two files have the same MD5 sum, the files are exactly alike - which is why MD5 "fingerprints" can verify whether or not your downloaded file got corrupted in transit, hence it is used to verify the integrity of files, as virtually any change to a file will cause its MD5 hash to change. MD5 digests have been widely used in the software world to provide some assurance that a transferred file has arrived intact. For example, file servers often provide a pre-computed MD5 (known as md5sum) checksum for the files, so that a user can compare th...
    1 comment
    Read more