Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Facebook (FB) is the most popular social platform worldwide, hosting 2.9 billion monthly active users. The draw to FB comes from its social connectivity, allowing friends and family to stay connected, updated, and in each other’s lives, no matter where they are. Facebook’s success is also due, in part, to its platform services. The Facebook Marketplace is among the most used, with nearly 16% of active users (491 million people) using the platform to review the available items.

For most folks, social media has become integral to their daily lives in today's hyperconnected world. They use platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to share their thoughts, experiences and personal moments with friends and family. Being online has even become a business for content creators, who share their insights and thoughts of their daily lives, from “Getting Ready With Me” (GRWM) to recording video trends of jumping over your camera to the beach or the latest dance craze.

BleepingComputer describes a phishing scam that’s been running rampant on Facebook for the past several months, in which threat actors use hacked accounts to post links to phony articles implying that someone has been killed in an accident. The Facebook posts have captions like “I can't believe he is gone,” accompanied by thumbnails of news articles involving car accidents or crime scenes.

Update: Meta appears to be coming online again. Breaking news: 3 threat actor groups (Skynet, Godzilla, and Anonymous Sudan) have claimed to attack and shut down Facebook, Threads and Instagram. Users are being automatically logged out of Meta and being shown session expired messages. Then they are unable to log back in. Instagram is showing feed errors.

You can avoid social media identity theft by setting strict privacy settings, securing your social media accounts with strong passwords, vetting every friend and follower request, keeping an eye out for phishing attempts and limiting what you share on social media. With almost every person having at least one social media account, cybercriminals are leveraging this by targeting these accounts to carry out various cyber attacks, including identity theft.

According to figures published in the ONS Crime Survey on 19 October, the rate of shop theft in the UK increased by 25 percent in the year ending June 2023. The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS), meanwhile, reported more than 1.1m instance of theft in 2022, with many carried out by organised gangs.

YouTube is the world's second-biggest social media platform, currently boasting 2.7 billion active users in 2023, second only to Facebook, which stands at 2.9 billion. An important feature of YouTube is YouTube Kids, where 35 million children can enjoy age-appropriate content for younger audiences (5-8 years) and older (9-12 years).