In fact, 66% of the victims said the attackers continued to post on their profiles after hijacking the account, and 69% confirmed that the attackers reached out to their friends and contacts in order to scam them. Social media accounts are highly valuable to cybercriminals as they hold a wealth of personal information, which may include the user's full name, email address, phone number, birth date, physical address, photos, private messages, and more, and can be used to commit fraud.Ī hijacked social media account can be utilized to take over even more accounts by publishing fraudulent posts, sending the victim's contact list malicious links, and asking their friends to reveal personal information or provide funds. A whopping 68% of victims have not regained access to their social media accounts. Twitter was reported by only 3% of social media account takeover victims, followed by WhatsApp (1%) and LinkedIn (1%).
A quarter (25%) of social media takeover victims also reported losing their Facebook accounts to malicious actors.
