Social Media and associated security concerns

May 13th, 2013

Peter Nolan

Social media, as all of us know, is an open platform for all the users worldwide that enables them to connect and share their thoughts with the people of their choice; either known or unknown. However, emergence of social media has raised issues like identity theft and account hack, hurting the privacy of the users. Even the owners of these social media platforms are finding it difficult to maintain the security of their online application from every kind of security threat. Hackers, in recent times, have even successfully broken down the security firewalls of different social media platforms posing a large threat to user’s privacy.

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Sometime last month Twitter announced that some of the profiles of famous people were compromised on Twitter due to hacking attempts. They also intimated that more attacks could be on the way. Accounts of The Guardian, BBC and FIFA President Sepp Blatter, were hacked as privacy of the accounts was compromised.
Last year, LinkedIn tweeted on its Twitter profile about the security breach in its network causing password leak of about 6 million accounts. A Russian hacker took the responsibility of intruding the network and cracking the hash of stored passwords, putting the security of several users at stake.

Even after all these hacking attempts, Social media companies mention very little about their security strategy to prevent from all these ongoing and seemingly growing threats. Most of the time, a set of guidelines for the users was announced to ensure their account is secure, but this time, after a false tweet from Associated Press’ account about explosion in White House, Twitter uncovered its strategy to avoid such situations.

Learning from experience that password theft is one of the crucial factors for causing a compromised account, the micro-blogging site, Twitter announced to involve Two-step authentication. This two-step authentication will make it harder for an intruder to gain access to accounts users as any suspicious activity will include reconfirmation from the user by using a code sent over the mobile text.

Another recommendation is to block any third-party app access to your account, in case of it being compromised. This would assure that a hacker is unable to access the account from any other entry point. Third-party app access should only be allowed from a trusted and well secured site and shouldn’t be practiced for any other purpose. Social privacy has become a serious concern for different social media platforms as they are experiencing a number of hack attempts and some of which have cracked the security boundaries successfully.

Also, as more and more businesses are relying on social media for business presence, it becomes a responsibility of social networks to safeguard the reputation of these businesses by imparting high level of security to each user. These issues ask for more attentive and preventive measures to be deployed because once the damage is done, it becomes impossible for businesses to get over it.

Source Article from http://www.examiner.com/article/social-media-and-associated-security-concerns?cid=rss