The History of Social Media Fraud
The birth of social media was a double-edged sword – revolutionizing both the way the world interacts and the way cyber criminals target organizations. This infographic chronicles the history of social media fraud and how you can fight back.
SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE HAS EXPLODED SINCE THE INITIAL DAYS OF MYSPACE. BY 2009, FACEBOOK HAD HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF USERS, BECOMING THE TOP ONLINE DESTINATION FOR CONNECTED PEOPLE WORLDWIDE. NETWORKS CONTINUE TO GROW, WITH 1 IN 3 PEOPLE IN THE WORLD PROJECTED TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA DAILY BY 2017.
A TIMELINE
’03 - MYSPACE LAUNCHED AS A CLONE OF FRIENDSTER
LINKEDIN LAUNCHED AS A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE FOR PROFESSIONALS
’04 - FACEBOOK LAUNCHED AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
’06 - TWITTER LAUNCHED AS A SOCIAL NETWORKING AND MICRO-BLOGGING SITE.
’07 - FACEBOOK LETS THIRD-PARTY DEVELOPERS CREATE FACEBOOK APPS SURPASSES MYSPACE IN MONTHLY UNIQUE VISITORS
‘09 - FACEBOOK REACHES 200 MILLION USERS.
‘10 - MAJOR EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL FRAUD APPEAR ON TWITTER
During “Deepwater Horizon” oil spill: With more than 20,000 followers at press time, the cynical response to the oil spill was twice as popular than BP's actual Twitter page, @BP_America.
The vulgar rants of Yahoo's dragon lady/CEO, Carol Bartz, appeared under a fake Twitter account.
Paramount Entertainment impersonator blasts racist and inappropriate/offensive Tweets.
A fake Richard Branson Twitter account promoted a London taxi service as an “endorsement” from Branson.
’12 - FACEBOOK REACHES 1 BILLION USERS - BILLION WITH A "B"
‘13 Southwest Airlines has an impersonator on Facebook with over 1,900 followers who may not know information from the page isn’t real.
“Furby” children’s toy victimized by fake Instagram account. Thai woman behind fake account steals over $200,000 (6 Million baht).
American Airlines, Jet Blue, Delta, United Airlines and Emirates were all victims of a mass-scale scam on Instagram, promising fake VIP deals and giveaways.
‘14 THE SOCIAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGY THAT CONNECTS US IN A DIGITAL WORLD HAS CREATED IMMEASURABLE LEVELS OF RISK. IMPERSONATIONS, FRAUD, SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND PHISHING AND MALWARE CAMPAIGNS PLAGUE THE SOCIAL MEDIA UNIVERSE.
BY THE NUMB3RS
SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE NOT JUST WEBSITES -- THEY ARE BUSINESS DESTINATIONS AND POWERFUL MARKETING TOOLS. THE VERSATILITY AND UBIQUITOUS ACCESS OF THESE SOCIAL NETWORKS CREATES COMPLEX AND DANGEROUS RISKS. ORGANIZATIONS MUST ADDRESS CYBER, BUSINESS, AND BRAND RISKS AS THEY BUILD THEIR SOCIAL COMMUNITIES.
72% OF COMPANIES BELIEVE EMPLOYEE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA POSES A THREAT TO THEIR ORGANIZATION.
33% OF USERS SAY THEY HAVE BEEN SENT MALWARE VIA A SOCIAL MEDIA SITE.
BETWEEN 5 AND 10 PERCENT OF TWITTER ACCOUNTS ARE FAKE.
$1,000 X - THE AVERAGE COST TO GET FAKE FOLLOWERS IN THE FAKE FOLLOWER “MARKET” IS ONLY $11 FOR 1,000.
ZEROFOX RECOMMENDATIONS
DEVELOP A SOCIAL RISK POLICY
Understand the risks that social media introduces and determine which matter to your organization.
Publish policy to the team members responsible for responding to social media threats and risks.
CONTINUOUSLY MONITOR SOCIAL MEDIA
Establish a real-time monitoring process to find potential risk issues across all germane social media platforms - not just Facebook and Twitter.
ANALYZE ISSUES & IDENTIFY RISKS
Leverage a sophisticated security analyst toolkit to analyze potential issues and identify threats and compliance issue.
PRIORITIZE BY SEVERITY & IMPACT
Categorize and prioritize response actions based on severity and business impact of identified threats and risk issues.
REMEDIATE & MITIGATE
Execute pre-built remediation and mitigation strategy to minimize damage.
Integrate cyber threat information into security systems to prevent compromise.
Work with social media networks to “takedown” malicious accounts, posts, threats and compliance violations that exist on their platforms. The history of social media is short in time, but full of exciting happening from all corners of the world.