Your guide to getting your Facebook account compromised
We spend most of our time giving advice on how to avoid getting your Facebook account compromised by cyber crooks. With this article, we’re taking a different approach.
In this article, we’re going into reverse. Here we outline the most effective and efficient ways to ensure that criminals have full access to your Facebook account in no time.
Accept ALL friend requests
Criminals love getting their hands on your personal information. After all, the more information they have about you, the better the chance they have of pretending to other people that they are you. And what better way of giving a stranger lots of useful information about you than to let them view the innards of your Facebook profile?
Not only that, but accepting anyone as a friend means you’re giving strangers the ability to send you malicious links through Messenger and on your timeline – links that can lead to any number of different scams all designed to compromise your Facebook account.
[See 5 Reasons why accepting strangers on Facebook is a bad idea]
Blindly trust any link you see on the Internet
Not only should you trust any link you see online, and not only should you click any link you see online, but it is also important to blindly enter your login details after clicking such links.
Whether it’s in an email, your Facebook newsfeed, on a website or through an instant message. Make sure you click on any links you see on the Internet and if you’re prompted to enter your Facebook login information, make sure you do. This is guaranteed to make sure you hand over that all-important username and password combo to crooks who may operate the websites you landed on after clicking away.
[See Facebook Phishing scams]
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Don’t enable Login Approvals
Login approvals make it difficult for criminals to gain access to your Facebook account because they’ll also need some other type of information to login other than your password. For example, a PIN sent to your phone.
To ensure that crooks get an easy, uninterrupted pathway into your account, make sure you disable Login approvals.
[See Why are Facebook Login Approvals so Important?]
Install every fun application you see
Facebook apps have the ability to hijack your account and post spammy links from it, so ensure that you install every app you see regardless of whether you know who developed it. Feel free to give these apps full permissions to your account so they can post from it, send messages to your friends and accumulate your personal information.
[See Should you install “fun and entertaining” Facebook apps?]
Never scan for malware and download and install anything that asks
Malware can be a very useful tool for crooks trying to gain access to your Facebook account. For example, keylogging spyware can log your password and username and send them to a criminal.
For this reason, make sure that whenever you are asked to download a file, plugin, update or anything else, give permission without performing any due diligence, even if you’re on a website you don’t trust.
Also, ensure you don’t have any security software installed and don’t perform regular security scans that could detect and remove any malware that does manage to infect your device.
Use public, unsecured Wi-Fi for Facebook
Use Facebook on public, unsecured Wi-Fi networks so criminals can eavesdrop on your Facebook activity with no problems, using any of a variety of listening tools readily available from the Internet.
Use a weak password
Use a password that is easily guessable, such as your name or date of birth, or words that appear in the dictionary.
Don’t log off shared computers
If you use a shared computer, make sure you stay logged on so that any subsequent user can access your Facebook account.
Don’t protect your phone
If you use Facebook on your phone, be extra cavalier with its security. Don’t enable password or biometric (e.g. fingerprint) authentication.
Using these useful tips, you’ll get your Facebook account compromised by crooks in no time.
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