In the course of the last two weeks, two of the most popular social media platforms have been the victims of an online hack attack where important information such as phone numbers, names, locations, email addresses, and biographical information was leaked, some of them are available for free and others are being proposed to be sold online.
Social Media Platforms: Personal data of Facebook and LinkedIn users attacks!
The data of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries have been leaked, the data include the Phone number, Facebook ID, Full name, Location, Past Location, Birthdate, (Sometimes) Email Address, Account Creation Date, Relationship Status, Bio. As for LinkedIn, the data 500 million accounts have been leaked (including their full names, email addresses, phone numbers, workplace information, and more.) which is believed to be two-third of the total of LinkedIn users, it is an awful blowout to both Facebook and LinkedIn which raises a big question to our minds, is our data really safe on social media platforms?
How can I secure my accounts on social media platforms?
One of the best security precautions to use when logging or using social platforms is to set up the “Two-Factor Authentication” option which requires the user to take an extra step when logging into his/her account, when you activate this option the platform will ask for your phone number, this action will help secure your login process even more by sending you a security code to your mobile phone to allow the user to open his account before finally reaching his personal feed so what this code will do is to ensure that the person entering the account is the same person who entered his mobile phone number when he/she activated the “Two-Factor Authentication” option.
With the Two-Factor Authentication instead of entering your phone number you can use another method which is an “Authenticator App”, this method uses a third-party authentication app like “Google Authenticator” or “Microsoft Authenticator” which will serve as an alternative to getting a security code other than getting it as a text message to your phone number, instead, these apps will generate a temporary security code for you to enter to the social media platform to finalize your login process.
How to verify if I was a victim of an online hack
Luckily there are some websites that can give you the chance to check If you were ever a victim of an online hacking attack like “F-Secure Identity Theft Checker” even though you didn’t know about it, basically what these websites will do is to check if your e-mail has been compromised in one of the most popular hack attacks that occurred in the web. What you have to do is to enter your e-mail address and the platform will go through the history of the attacks that have occurred and will check if your e-mail address or any other personal information was leaked in one of those attacks.
