Without a doubt, one of the main objectives of hackers is password theft . They will use different methods to find out. In this article we are going to talk about how social networks like Facebook or Instagram will be very useful for attackers if you make mistakes. You will see how they can know your access codes and of course what you should avoid for this to happen.
They use social networks to steal passwords
We can say that social networks are a widely used means of communication and also very useful for staying informed. But in one way or another we are going to expose a lot of information . On sites like Facebook or Instagram we can expose data on where we live, where we travel, what is the name of our pet, what is our date of birth…
And yes, nowadays a very important percentage of Internet users still use insecure passwords that contain things like their name and surname, date of birth, the name of their pet, where they live… And hackers know that, so they can find a way to find out this data to create different combinations and find a way to break the access codes.
This is where social networks such as Facebook or Instagram come into play, which in many cases will provide a large amount of information . An attacker can enter our profile and see when our birthday is, if we have any photos with our pet and see if we have put their name, where we live, etc.
In case we have any of the passwords that are very common (and insecure) such as the name and date of birth, combining the name of the pet and where we live or anything similar, a hacker would have many options to enter on the account. What you would have to do is combine the most common and try to see if those keys match.
How to avoid this problem
Luckily, avoiding this problem is really easy. The first thing is to always use a password that is really secure. You should avoid everything that we have mentioned: do not use your name, date of birth, words or digits that can relate to you, such as the name of your pet or the telephone number, etc.
That password must be unique and totally random . Think of a key like 3(dP-l%-a=1$nOw. Hard to figure out, right? Surely hackers weren’t going to guess it and even brute force attacks would be unfeasible if the access key is what it is. long enough, so that’s the first piece of advice.
The second advice, beyond the problem that they can find out passwords, is not to expose more personal information than necessary on social networks. Not only could they know what your password is, that really if you use a secure key there would be no reason for it, but they could use that information to launch personalized Phishing attacks and thus steal the key.
A good idea is to use password managers to be able to create and store passwords with total security. This will help you not to forget them, but also not to make the mistake of using simple things, such as our name or date of birth. This is the only way you can always protect your accounts, whether they are from social networks or any other online platform.
