Last week, social feeds and web articles flooded the
Internet with notification of a major password hacking from the professional
network, Linkedin.
It was reported that a Russian hacker breached over 6.46 million accounts. The
company released an apology and is still working on repairing the damage. Just
when things were starting to settle down, reports stated that the very same hacker had
accessed more than 1.5 million accounts on dating site, eHarmony.com.
Although this was significantly less, the concerns were just as high, if not
worse. How could this be happening all over the web? Social media poses a huge
threat beyond just the over abundance of personal information people share of
these sites. Eric Knapp, VP of Client Services, says, All social media accounts
require an email. Once a hacker has an email address and a password its easy
enough to continue hacking other accounts.
Users also make themselves vulnerable to multiple attacks by using the
same passwords for every account. Unfortunately, this finding was not dispersed
soon enough and this is not the end of the story.
Just this week, 10,000 Twitter accounts
were reported as being hacked via Twitter-app. This breach made profiles, full
names, passwords, and locations all public information after a group of hackers got into the system. All the sites that have been hacked this month have issued
public statements and urged their users to change their passwords. This has
become a pretty standard procedure and has proven not to protect their users.
If these accounts were hacked before, what difference does a new password make
for the next time?
Social media sites and other sites that require users to form
an account need to look deeper into preventing Internet fraud by enforcing
better security measures. A password should be the bare minimum, not the
solution. Integrating identity verification could help prevent the amount of online hacking. This would
require further criteria other than an email and password in order to access
account information. The more common password hacking becomes, the easier it
will become and harder to prevent. Sites
that want to stay ahead of the security curve need to consider building a wall
between entering login information and accessing the account by investing in outside security measures. This will help prevent future hackings and unsatisfied
users.
[Contributed by, EVS Marketing]
