How hackers are defacing Facebook walls

The accounts of thousands of Facebook users all over the world have been increasingly targeted by unknown hackers, with pornographic images and nasty messages appearing on their wall and circulated across the social network.

You’ve probably seen it happen to at least one of your online “friends”.

You’re reading the latest status updates on the Facebook News Feed and you are stung by what you see. You doubt whether your friend really posted the update.

Some of the postings include pornographic movies on users’ walls, which are invisible to the owners of the wall but are visible to friends. You imagine the embarrassment.

There is a huge traffic on the Facebook, estimated at more than a billion logins every 24 hours.

Among these, 600,000 are said to be impostors attempting to access users’ messages, photos and other personal information.

The most common reason for hackers to breach Facebook users’ accounts is so that they can spread scams and send false offers to the member’s friends in an attempt to sell counterfeit goods and benefit financially.

These examples illustrate the phenomenon of “status jacking”, a popular form of online malice that strikes social network users when they least expect it.

Onsite or in-person status jacking typically by a friend, family member, or other person with direct access to the victim’s personal computer or social network account.

Often the result of leaving one’s computer unattended while still logged into a personal Facebook.

This can easily be avoided by making sure to log out of all social networking websites while away from the computer.

This also goes for any site that contains sensitive personal data such as online banking and email.

Users can take further precaution by unchecking the “Keep me logged in” box (Facebook) and similar checkbox options on other sites.

Choose passwords that will be difficult for others to figure out, using a blend of numbers, upper and lower-case letters, and non-alphanumeric characters.

Of the down side is, the harder they are to be cracked, the easier it is for you to forget.

The other more worrying jacking is the remote one. Phishers, hackers, and their ilk employ a variety of complex methods to obtain your personal login information and turn your accounts into spam factories.

To get an idea of the growing popularity of this phenomenon, a google search of “hacking facebook” or “facebook phishing” reveals details on how to take over someone’s personal account.

People with hacking mind will follow these steps and take-over people’s Facebook accounts and do all sorts of things including, unfortunately, the most malicious ones.

Increasingly, more people are also duped into sharing their login details on fake sites, a process called phishing, which gives hackers access to passwords and email accounts.

Be careful where you log in. Using an unfamiliar computer or network with insufficient Internet security can leave you and your personal information vulnerable to third-party discovery.

Ensure you have maximum security on your account. If you have any linked accounts such as Google or Yahoo!, remove them, as these automatically log you into Facebook whenever you log into them.

If your Facebook settings aren’t airtight or you doubt them, check out PrivacyDefender at http://privacydefender.net/, the free Facebook application.

PrivacyDefender is an easy to use tool that automatically configures your Facebook privacy settings. All you need to do is select your desired level of privacy protection and PrivacyDefender does the rest.

The social network is rolling out some new features in an attempt to further protect Facebook users’ security.

‘Trusted Friends’ is a tool which will allow users to nominate three to five ‘trusted friends’ to be sent login codes if a person is locked out of their account, having had their password changed by a hacker.

But common sense and gut feelings are not equal to any security measures.

Sam Wambugu is a monitoring and evaluation specialist. Samwambugu@gmail.com