Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

4.2.4
 
Shortened links 
The ability to shorten URL links using services such as bit.ly has been a marvel that 
has helped users to make long URLs short so that they can be fit into small spaces. However, 
they have increasingly been used for malicious purposes on social media platforms. Rogue 

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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 profile. Users then give 
it their login credentials which are taken by the spammers to access a user’s 
account and also friends list. 
•
Instant followers – Followers have become a way of accreditation and most 
users want to have many followers on their accounts. There are malicious apps 
that have been created to sell this false hope to users and also to hack them in 
the process. There are apps that claim to be able to get users more followers 
only if they are given the login to one’s account. Once they get the login of a 
user, they use the victim’s account to contact other users.
•
Instagram likes – It is similar to the above-explained third-party threat. In this 
threat, the user gets promised by the app that he or she will get thousands of 
free likes on Instagram and at times even free followers. The catch is still the 
same, one has to give out the valid login credentials only for them to be stolen.