Learn how to protect your social media accounts: https://www.aura.com/learn/how-to-protect-your-personal-information-on-social-media
By the way, these crypto scammers got caught: https://www.nme.com/news/music/teenager-who-hacked-kanye-wests-twitter-account-is-jailed-2903487
What do Barack Obama and Joe Biden have in common? U.S. presidents? Yes, but they also got hacked. So did Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
All four of them were part of a massiveTwitter account hijacking, which led to a huge Bitcoin scam.
A massive cyber attack targeted and hijacked 130 celebrity Twitter accounts. Once they got access to their Twitter accounts, the hackers sent out tweets seeking bitcoin:
“I’m giving back to my community due to COVID-19! All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000 I will send back $2,000. only doing this for the next 30 minutes.”
Unsuspecting followers clicked the links in the tweets and made the transactions, but never received any money. During this time, the hackers were able to get away with more than $100,000. And of course, the reputation of the celebrities was damaged. Not only that, but affected users couldn’t normally retweet content. NBC News had to set up a temporary, not verified account, so they could continue to tweet the news.
Further investigation on the Twitter hack revealed that administrative tools have been used to bypass the account security. So practically, that means that there was not much the celebrities could do to protect themselves. Still, there are lessons for all of us to learn in these celebrities’ hacks.
Many of the celebrities were using the same password for multiple social media platforms. So the Twitter hack allowed scammers to hack more social media profiles on multiple platforms.
And this is not the first time that has happened with Twitter. You would think that Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Meta would have been smarter with his password. But the hackers learned that Zuckerberg was using the same password -dadada- for both his Twitter and Pinterest accounts.
And after targeting Zuckerberg, the next victim was Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter. Once they guessed Williams’ Foursquare account password, they successfully used it to unlock his Twitter account.
So even though these are big names and celebrities and they are more likely to be targeted for hacking attacks, your data is not safe.
Avoid using the same password more than once. And use a password manager to keep track of the different passwords on your social media and online accounts.
Aura comes with a password manager and you can try it for free by clicking on the link here: https://buy.aura.com/free-trial
Another technique that cyber criminals are using is brute force. So they’re trying to guess your password by trying your address, your name, family names. birthdays etc. So, avoid using easy to guess passwords. For example, another big celebrity got hacked when cyber criminals just guessed his password.
That person is Donald Trump and his Twitter password was “MAGA2020!”.
Basic security mistakes, like using weak passwords and falling for phishing scams are all it takes to destroy your reputation.
Spend a bit more time when deciding your passwords, write them down on paper so you will never forget and don’t repeat the same password on many platforms.
Every time you think this is a drag ask yourselves: What would happen if cyber criminals gain access to your iCloud Photo, sensitive emails or social media accounts?
Beside violating your privacy and creating a deep sense of fear and distrust, hackers could steal your identity which would conventionally lead to financial ruin.
source