We take a look at the top 3 myths surrounding computer hackers on social networking sites such as Facebook.
For the purposes of the article, the term “hacker” is taken to mean someone who breaks into computer systems or accounts for nefarious purposes.
It is no secret that cyber criminals of all sorts exploit the Facebook platform in a variety of ways in order to scam those who socialise on the website. However along with all the genuine scams to keep an eye on comes an equal amount of rumours or myths that have surfaced over the years that only end up causing users to waste their time and worry for no reason.
So we take a quick look and debunk the top 3 myths about hackers on Facebook
A popular fallacy that persistently appears in the form of alarmist rumours floating across social media is the assertion that hackers are trying to add people on Facebook and that adding them will afford them automatic access to your Facebook account and/or computer.
This rumour actually has its roots from the early days of the Internet when MSN and Yahoo messengers were the more popular way of instant chatting with friends on the Internet. Rumours asserted that hackers were trying to add people on those services in order to hack their computers.
The rumours are no more valid now than they were back then. Adding friends on Facebook does not give them access to your Facebook account or your computer. At least not that action alone, it won’t.
With that said, you still shouldn’t add strangers to Facebook, because it can lead to problems. People you friend on Facebook have access to the personal information you share on the site which can be valuable to identity thieves. Friends on Facebook can also post links to your account which can be dangerous if you click on them.
Essentially, luring you into adding people on social media that you shouldn’t do can be part of an online scam, but it isn’t the scam itself.
A popular indication that something has gone awry with your Facebook account is when it starts posting automatically on your behalf.
This can happen on the walls of your friends, under the comments section of your friends status updates or under the comments section of threads started by Pages that you Like.
If this happens, something is certainly wrong, but it is extremely unlikely that a hacker has taken control of your account. It does mean that you’ve fallen for a scam of some kind though. It is likely that you have fallen for one of five scams – a phishing scam, a rogue Facebook app, a rogue browser extension, a copy/paste Javascript scam or you have a koobface (malware) infection.
In each of the 5 cases above it means that the owner of the account has fallen for a scam, and you can read about how to clean up your account if it does post by itself by reading here.
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Plenty of people who use Facebook do not understand how computers or networks or the Internet really works, and it is human nature to be wary of what we do not understand. This in turn has led to much paranoia when using computers. If something happens that we do not understand or do not expect it is easy to turn the blame to the ambiguous “hacker” or “virus” that must be responsible.
The way hackers are portrayed in the media and in movies compounds the problem, as it adds to the belief that technical wizards are sat at their computers, a multitude of monitors in front of them bustling with complex algorithms and equations, creating magical code that when executed can instantly bypass Facebook’s security and compromise your account and your computer.
The reality is somewhat different.
Whilst there are famous examples of hackers breaking into the networks belonging to a variety of high profile companies such as Microsoft, Sony and LinkdIn, it remains highly unlikely that your personal Facebook account will ever be “hacked” in such a way.
In fact the vast majority of computer criminals out there will actually rely on luring you to a trap, where they aim to fool you into giving away sensitive information yourself, or otherwise compromising your computer. Most people who end up compromising their security online do so because they fell for a scam, because they are not sufficiently educated about relatively fundamental online security principles.
In the real world, it’s sort of like being tricked into leaving your own back door unlocked, as opposed to criminals using sophisticated techniques to gain enter your house.
So it’s more plausible that if your account becomes compromised, it is because you have fallen for a scam (such as a phishing scheme, or you have inadvertently installed malicious software.) The likelihood that a hacker will have managed to compromise your account without you yourself falling for some sort of online trap is much less likely than you’d think.
What myths about hackers do you know? Share with us below.
