We talked to members of our Malware Removal Support team and asked them what kind of problems they get asked to solve for our customers.
To understand why they get to handle these questions, it is also necessary to know that the Malwarebytes software is unable to resolve the problems users are facing. Many of these problems can be categorized under the header of trusting the wrong people.
You know how it freaks people out when Facebook shows them advertisements for things they have only just thought about buying? Many wonder how Facebook knows this.
They say, “I haven’t searched for the item yet, but here they are showing me this advertisement.”
It gets even worse when people have had a private conversation about it, and they think the advertisers or the platform has been eavesdropping on them.
Most of the time that is not true. So, how do the platforms know what ads to serve you?
Some people get so convinced they have spyware on their system that they contact our support team to help them get rid of it. All we can do is inform the public and point those looking for help in the right direction.
Besides people not securing their Facebook settings and making everything public, they also make more blatant mistakes like posting their email addresses, clicking on links to surveys in Facebook, clicking on unsolicited links in Messenger, and answering posts that phish for information that makes it easier to guess your passwords.
Every Facebook user will have seen posts like this. Don’t give information like that away.
This comment by one MRS agent during our discussion says a lot:
> “I had 2 friends on Facebook today get their profiles taken over because they clicked links they shouldn't have clicked.”
In cases where these mishaps go wrong, all our Support team can do is tell people they have to contact Facebook as unfortunately we can't help them.
Another privacy related concern we often get asked about are the sextortion emails that try to intimidate the recipient by telling them the attacker has their password. But that password usually originates from some security breach and the sender has just found it in a data dump somewhere. A quick way to check is a visit to the Have I been Pwned? website.
If you do get an email like this, you should change the password anywhere you use it. And please use Multi-Factor Authentication wherever possible.
Social media is a perfect way for scammers to reach a lot of people, and we often see them using this to round up victims. There are many kinds of Bitcoin scams to be found on YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms. And along with Tech Support scams, Ponzi schemes, misinformation, and many phishing attempts, you can find every kind of scammer on social media without having to look very hard.
To round this off we assembled a few other mistakes our team sees a lot. So steering clear of these can save you a lot of trouble.
Stay safe, everyone!
The post How social media mistakes can impact cybersecurity appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.