How social media is used for Scamming

Have you ever been a target of a scam ? Even known about scams ? hmmm well if you don't have a clear idea about it , this is the best place to get to know about scams in social media.

1. An attacker can ask people to share a particular post or his/her own website on other social media platforms in order to get access to a particular file or video.

2. When users go to view videos in a particular website the website will ask to install plugins to watch the video. This plugin might be a trojan horse program which will harm users’ computer or data.

3. Another incident would be click baits. Article or a video might look like it has some shocking information but the actual content inside that can be utter waste.


4. One of the most popular methods attackers use is sweepstakes or lotteries. 
They will ask to fill form and submit to win a prize (g:- iPhones, trip to Malaysia etc)

5. In holiday seasons like Christmas you will be seeing a lot of fake charity events in social media platforms. They will ask you to donate money.

Reasons for scamming 

1. Build a relationship
Once you submitted a form they will get your e-mail addresses and send e-mails about various different things such as advertisements, social awareness things.

2. Gather information
If the other party doing a survey or something they will gather all your information and put together to come up with a conclusion (eg :- what is the most popular mail service among people )

3. Exploit any identified vulnerability
Assume that there is a mail service called A and attackers find out a vulnerability in A server which can be used to hack all the customers of mail service A. Attackers can go through submitted forms and find out people who use service A. Then their accounts will be hacked.

4. Financial benefits
People who gather information can sell those information to another person or to an organization. This is called information brokering.

How to avoid scams?

1. Avoid clicking on suspicious links and videos.

2. Always look at the URL displayed in URL bar. If it does not look familiar or does not come from the website you wanted to visit close the window without clicking on anything.

3. Some of these scam sites are hosted on free hosting sites. Therefore they are served on HTTP . If you see HTTP instead of HTTPS(Secured) avoid it.

4. Give dummy values in textboxes if you do not trust.

5. In emails check sender’s email address. Attackers can be very smart but you have the responsible to notice even tiny differences between bogus and valid email addresses.