Imagine your Instagram account to be a kingdom and your followers are citizens of the that kingdom. One day, a ruler from another land marches into your castle and forces you to surrender. You’d have no choice, but to submit your throne along with the citizens.
On grounds of the above analogy, something similar can happen to your social media account if a hacker were to gain access to your login credentials. It can lead to your account becoming inaccessible to you and subsequently a loss of your follower count.
This has happened to many and could happen to you.
The Ones Who Got Duped
Sometimes people are just desperate! Or naive. Recently, an amateur Youtuber in Ghaziabad, Saddam Hussain, who has had a YouTube channel by the name DJ King Studio handed his account login credentials to a person who was posing as a YouTube official.
The imposter claimed that he would help Saddam with his channel. Later, the hacker used Saddam’s own credentials to lock him out of his account. Someone really took the biscuit.
Around 6PM on December 11, I got a call from a person who introduced himself as Harish Sharma and said he was an official with the YouTube “creator support” wing. He sought my personal details saying he would help me with some work. Soon after I gave him the information, he hacked into my account and took control of the channel.Saddam told The Times of India
Following this, an FIR has been registered at the Sahibabad police station.
Another case similar to the one above happened back in 2014 when a developer, Naoki Hiroshima had acquired a coveted Twitter handle @N which was later stolen from him.
Hiroshima lost possession of the handle after he found out that his credentials and account details on GoDaddy had been changed. This is when he didn’t even do anything!
Apparently, Hiroshima’s credit card information with GoDaddy had been altered by an attacker. In fact, all the information had been changed and Hiroshima had no way to prove that he was the real owner of the account.
After diving deeper into this issue he found that hackers had hijacked his GoDaddy account which he used to run multiple websites. He was held hostage by anonymous hackers who just wanted the reins to his single letter Twitter handle.
In the end, Hiroshima has to reluctantly hand over the single letter Twitter handle in exchange for his GoDaddy account. You can read more on how Hiroshima recovered his online credentials account here.
Spot the Imposter
Let’s get one thing straight. Just like you are not supposed to share your ATM pin or bank account password with anyone (not even bank employees), similarly, you’re not supposed to share you social media account details with anyone.
Speaking to The Quint on the above incident, a Youtube representative confirmed that its officials do not ask for any user account details or other credentials. The company also mentioned how serious its policies are when it comes to protecting users from malicious online entities.
We take account security very seriously and notify users when we detect suspicious activity. As soon as a creator sees unusual activity on their YouTube channel, they can notify our team to disable access to the compromised account and get help with channel recovery. We strongly suggest partners and creators to enable 2-Step verification to add an extra layer of security to their account.YouTube spokesperson
Almost every social media application or platform like Facebook, Instagram and even YouTube has a “Help” section on its website and app where users can post grievances and request troubleshooting and solutions. Just need to have the eye to spot the same.
It is imperative that you refrain from sharing your social media account details with anyone if you want to keep your accounts and followers safe. The best solution to avoid such a scenario is to enable 2-step authentication for all your social media apps. Consider it a necessary evil.
This makes it even more difficult for hackers as then there’s a phone number and OTP (one-time-password) involved.
Hackers and many people posing as ‘company representatives’ will try to gain access to your accounts by any means, therefore the responsibility also lies in your hands to be vigilant of any unscrupulous online activity.
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