The Rise in Hacking & Fake News - Is Social Media Worth It?
This article aims to get you thinking and debating in response to some of the most pressing questions of our digital age. When tasked with a debating topic, think:
What is the problem and solution?
Advantages and disadvantages?
What is your opinion?
Recently, you might have seen some tweets like the one to the right here. Famous people like Bill Gates talking about generosity and giving back to the community by sending you money. Seem too good to be true? Sadly that’s because it was, it was just a trick played by a ‘hacker’ on Twitter users. ‘Hacking’ is a term used a lot in the online world. While this is a ‘Twitter hack’, any online account can be hacked. You or someone you know might have had their Facebook account or email ‘hacked’, but what does it really mean and why would somebody do it?
There are many different types of hacking, but they are all motivated by a hacker wanting access to information that they are not supposed to see. Hacking can be as simple as guessing someone’s password, or it can be tricking someone into giving the hacker their password. If a hacker wishes to steal a password, they may impersonate a person or business (called spoofing). You could receive an email claiming to be from Twitter, asking you to enter your password to ‘unlock your account’. This email will actually be from the hacker and, if you click the link and type in your password, they can then use it to log into your account. The link could also contain something called malware, a piece of software that could download on to your computer via the link and steal passwords to your other accounts.
This doesn’t mean, however, that this information is what the hacker actually wants. Take this Twitter hack for example, it is very doubtful that the hacker(s) only wanted to impersonate Bill Gates and other famous people on Twitter. What they actually wanted was to trick people into sending money to their own ‘BTC address’. A BTC address is a little bit like an online bank account, except it is anonymous. This is where a person keeps their Bitcoin, an online currency with which they can trade and pay for things online. By giving out their BTC address, a hacker can receive money from someone without that person, or anyone else, knowing who they are. Bitcoin can be used by anyone, and while it is not always used for shady activities like this, the fact that nobody can trace who you are (unlike a bank account which has your name and address attached to it!) means it is perfect for criminal activity. Now go back and look at the screenshot from the beginning of this article. How has the hacker tried to make sure people actually send their money to this (the hacker’s) BTC address? (See bottom of article for some suggestions).
It wasn’t just Bill Gates’ account that was hacked, many famous people and companies appeared to tweet similar things, all with the goal of having people send money to a BTC address belonging to the hacker(s), with the fake promise of getting more money back. According to Twitter’s report, the hacker(s) are estimated to have earned $120000 from this scam.
With such a risk to people’s finances, what did Twitter do about it? Their first response was to stop all ‘verified’ accounts from tweeting. This meant that the hacker could not continue to tweet out messages while impersonating these accounts. Twitter would then have required all of the users of these accounts to change their passwords and began to investigate where the hacking came from. After an investigation, Twitter found that some of their own tools were potentially used in the hack, suggesting that the hacker had managed to access Twitter’s own computers. This hack made the news because it involved so many famous people on a big social network, but unfortunately this is the sort of thing that hackers try to do all the time. Companies of all descriptions spend huge amounts of time and money keeping up the online security of their business to ensure that themselves and their customers are as safe as possible from online attacks like this.
It is clear that hackers can cause havoc in very little time and they cost consumers and businesses huge amounts of money in the process. One of the easiest ways they can trick people into giving away money or data is by posting on social media, just as was shown by the example given in this article.
So is social media worth it?
Of course, hacking has been around since long before social media but never before have hackers had such a huge and accessible audience. Whereas before they would have had to target individual email addresses or very well secured email account hosts, now they can impersonate famous people with huge audiences, either by hacking their accounts or simply spoofing them. While social media is an excellent way of staying interconnected with other people, that very network provides a breeding ground for shareable tricks and scams, in a way that direct messaging such as texts and emails simply doesn’t.
Let’s consider the trajectory of social media. Each new form seems to be more focussed on media. Consider that Facebook uses equal parts text and media, Instagram uses mostly images and now TikTok uses video and music. While this is not the traditional operating ground of a hacker, it does provide huge opportunity for false advertising. This is an easily accessible way for potential hackers to impersonate a company or provide a false description of a product in order to gain access to data or money. Clicking on a fake product advert while scrolling through Instagram is easily done. If the webpage to which it takes you contains malware in the form of other adverts or links, a user may be under a false sense of security because they accessed the page through a social media site, and be less vigilant when browsing the page.
The simple solution might be to strictly regulate or even stop advertising on social media sites, but unfortunately that is where a large proportion of their revenue comes from. If there were no adverts, then each social media site would have to turn to a subscription service (putting their content behind a pay wall) if they wanted to keep operating. Clearly the solution is much more complicated than this, but what is it? The tighter social media platform advertising is regulated, the less revenue the companies may make and the more motivated they will be to put some or all of their services behind a pay wall. However, the longer the regulations remain as they are, the more people will fall foul to false advertising and potential platforms for hacking. And this is all before tackling the major issues around fake news!
Would you rather an advert-free social media experience, or one where you are potentially at risk of being tricked by false advertising? How do social media companies justify allowing false advertising on their platforms? How might social media companies adapt to people becoming more suspicious of advertising and thus clicking on them less, without having to make up their lost advertising revenue with pay walls?
As I’m sure you can tell from this article, hacking and the world of internet security is a complicated business. Even big businesses are not totally safe from online hackers. Some of the information in this article might help you consider how to keep yourself and your accounts safe, but there is lots more information and advice on websites like the one linked below.
https://uk.pcmag.com/security-software/40622/10-simple-things-you-can-do-to-be-more-secure-online
Here are some additional questions about internet security to think about.
How could you identify a fake Facebook giveaway advert?
How should a government decide what information to allow a company to gather about their customers?
Is it better to spend resources on increasing internet security, or educating people on online scams?
Suggestions for Twitter hacker’s technique
By hacking into the account, they’ve tweeted from Bill Gates’ actual Twitter account (see the little white tick by his name, indicating that Twitter has verified him)
They targeted a verified account so it is likely that a lot of people follow that account and would see the tweet
They’ve given context by saying that Bill Gates wants to give back to people
They’ve indicated a large amount of money that someone could send. If every person who sends money sends a large amount like $1000, the hacker only needs to trick a few people in order to make a lot of money
They have given a very short time limit (30 minutes). If people feel rushed to complete this action, they are less likely to spend time thinking about whether it might be fake