What can be dangerous social networks?

Since the advent of social networks, their popularity has been growing every day. And it is so high that almost every user of the Internet is registered in one or another social network. We all know about the advantages of this virus-like segment of the Network, but are we thinking about its disadvantages?

Some social networks have just a huge number of users registered – for example, recently one of the networks celebrated the registration of forty millionth user. Just think about this figure! As it is known, even since ancient times a mass gathering of people has always attracted lovers of money and deception of gullible citizens. In this article we will talk about the real dangers and harm that social networks inflict on us.

The first danger I described is connected not only with social networks, but also with the Internet as a whole. It’s about mobile scam.

Types of fraud

If you are an active user of the Internet, you have often noticed that some sites offer to perform some kind of service only after sending an SMS message. For example, in order to download a movie, book, game, etc., you need to send an SMS message.

In addition, recently, all banner and contextual advertising is replete with ads of the following kind: “Send us an SMS message with the number of the person, and you will find out all the information about him, which is contained in a single closed database.” Or another: “You can find out all the correspondence by sending us a message with the number of a person” … and so on. There are also cases when you have passed a test, but in order to know its results, you need to send an SMS message.

These are all different cases of the same type of fraud. What is the connection of this type of fraud with social networks?

And the connection is very simple, because all advertising on these malicious sites is distributed through social networks. As a rule, the real cost of the sent SMS-message far exceeds the declared by the site. If you have already fallen for the bait of mobile fraudsters, that is, you have sent an SMS message, you can apply with a statement to your mobile operator. The statement is to describe in detail the problem. Often it is possible to return the money back.

Addiction

The second danger posed by virtual social networks is related to dependence on these networks. Modern virtual networks contain some paid services. For example, one of the well-known networks provides the ability to send messages using regular SMS: when a message arrives on your account, you receive an alert on your mobile phone and can reply to it with an SMS message.

Naturally, a highly dependent person seeks to use social networks in full, without any restrictions, and, as a rule, pays for such questionable services. In addition, many social networks have integrated online games, for playing which you need real money.

The purpose of the next type of fraud is to take over your social network page. Having acquired a page, a fraudster can find out detailed information about you, your contacts, information about your acquaintances, friends, he can also conduct fraudulent activities from your page. The scheme of this fraud is very simple.

In fact, such a fraud can be attributed to the type of hacker attack, which is called phishing. It consists in the fact that the hacker slips you instead of the real page, where you enter your username and password to enter the social network, a fake page, and thus you yourself pass the data from your page to the scammer.

Forgery occurs as follows. A message comes to the user’s mail with an offer of friendship in a social network, download music, videos, games, etc. The message contains a masked link that leads to a copy of the page of a social network. For security reasons, we advise you never to follow these links and enter the page address in the address bar.

The trust

Another type of fraud is based on trust. Imagine the following situation. You receive a message from a friend or a good friend with a request to borrow electronic money, download some content or click on a link. Sitting on the other side of the screen, you can not know exactly who sent you a message – a friend or a crook who took control of the page, and, as a rule, you, without thinking about it, fulfill the request.

It is very simple to isolate yourself from this fraud, you just need to contact a friend who sent a message asking for another communication channel (for example, by calling) and ask for confirmation of the request.

I listed only the most popular types of fraud through social networks. However, remember that every day new, more sophisticated fraudulent schemes are invented. Be careful. As it is not trivial, but your safety is in your hands.