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users make enticing titles and share links to malicious websites through shortened URLs
(Cao, 2016). Unaware, other users click on these links in expectation of the enticing content
just to get a rude shock of malware invasion their computers.
4.2.5
Fake accounts
It is surprisingly easy for people to create fake profiles on social media. Before
verification services
by most social media platforms, celebrities were dealing with this
problem of impersonation on social media where people would create fake profiles with the
celebrity names. The fake celebrity accounts were being and are still being used to get a
massive social media following and the new followers can easily get spammed. For example,
if a famous
celebrity releases an album, the fake profile could give malicious links to the
followers telling them that they can get the album for free by clicking on the attached links.
The problem of fake accounts is still relevant today, where
malicious people have been
creating fake accounts with the intention of using them to defraud or request for some favors
from unsuspecting users (Harris, Seetharaman and Tau, 2017). Due to the difficulty in
differentiating between the actual and fake accounts on social media platforms, this threat is
seemingly not going to get a solution anytime soon.
4.2.6
Rogue third-party applications
Sometime in 2016, a researcher unearthed rogue third-party applications on the social
media platform with the highest number of users, Facebook. The third-party applications had
extensive rights to a user's profile and were using these rights to collect a lot of sensitive data
from the user's account. There are other rogue applications that are being said to have
malicious codes. When a user uses these applications, they are said to ultimately compromise
the user's device and gather sensitive information stored on the browser. There are quite a
number of third-party applications that are present on different social media. They include:
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•
Facebook Color Changer – This third-party app
claims to be able to change
one's Facebook profile from the ‘boring blue' color to other colors. It only
ends up using one’s account to get free promotion to other people and then
lead users to malicious sites.
•
Who has viewed your account – It is another third-party
app that tells users
that it will be able to show the people that viewed their prof
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