You might think that social media hacking is when someone posts an embarrassing status update on your Facebook or Twitter, but as the popularity of social media grows exponentially, so too does the criminal activity associated with it. Although you don’t include any financial information on social media networks, the large amount of personal information you place on there means that identity theft is on the rise.
The most basic level of hacking usually sets out to embarrass, defame or cause mistrust about a person or business. As mentioned above it involves hacking into a person or company’s account and posting a fraudulent status update or tweet. A recent example of this was when the Twitter profile of the Associated Press was hacked and a statement appeared which said the White House had been bombed and President Obama was inured.