Social media the latest hunting ground to steal your private information

Social media has become the latest hunting ground for cyber criminals who want to steal private information, according to NortonLifeLock’s latest Cyber Safety Pulse report.

The research details cybersecurity insights observed between April and June 2022 which were gained through the company’s global cyberthreat analysis.

The report takes in a full year of study of phishing attacks on the top social media platforms which are littered with numerous ploys to lure victims including fake login pages designed to trick users into sharing their login credentials.

“Threat actors use social media for phishing attacks because it’s a low-effort and high return way to target billions of people around the world,” said Mark Gorrie, APAC Senior Director NortonLifeLock.

“As social media is intertwined in our daily lives, it’s key to know how to spot the signs of a scam and keep a sharp eye on where requests for your information are coming from.

“Even better, consider strong, multi-layered security that can be on the lookout for you, too.”

Norton Labs has discovered the top methods used by cybercriminals to trick users into offering up their personal information.

While the login page is the classic and most common method cybercriminals use, they have developed other tricks.

Other tactics include account lockouts which look like a person has been locked out of their account because of a copyright violation before being led down a path designed to extract login details.

Another method used on social media is the promise of generating more followers with the procedure resulting in the installation of malware and demand for login credentials.

Verified badge scams have become more popular and prompt users to log in so as not to lose their verified status on the platform.

Some scams go as far as intercepting temporary codes to crack profiles with two-factor authentication.

These tokens are usually tied to the victim’s device and give the cybercriminal the ability to perform privileged operations including modifying personal details or obtaining login credentials.

Between April and June 2022, Norton blocked more than 900 million threats which equates to about 10 million threats per day globally.

Here in Australia, Norton blocked. 32,660,129 threats which equates to an average of 358,902 blocks per day.

In that time, there were 22.6 million phishing attempts globally, 986,492 of them here in Australia.

There were 103.7 million file threats around the world, 1,570,841 in Australia.

In Australia alone there were 41,029 tech support threats blocked.

Globally. There were 302,000 mobile threats and 78,000 ransomware attacks.