John

  Instagram is joining forces with Twitter and several other social media platforms to take down accounts of those users who have engaged in stealing hundreds of single-word usernames. Such short, enviable handles, also called “O.G. usernames” (think of usernames like @King, @Queen, @Angel, etc.), are valuable because they are catchy and grant status. Users who seized such usernames first were early adopters. The craze to have these O.G. usernames has led to cybercriminals purchasing and selling them on messaging apps and dedicated forums. After a monthslong investigation by Instagram into ogusers.com, which is the main forum where the selling and trading of such usernames take place, the crackdown finally began last week. The platform found that cybercriminals acquired stolen usernames through blackmailing, hacking, and harassing. Such account handles were then sold for as much as $40,000; such is the craze! For years, this kind of manipulation has gone unchecked to a great extent. Th

On hearing the term “social media threats,” most of the people can only think as far as to fake accounts, trolls, fake followers that are bought online, or maybe the fake news and accusations that go viral in seconds across social media platforms. However, in this process, what is most often forgotten is social media security. People fail to realize how it can be used to cause damage to a company and its customers through online threats like fake business accounts, brand impersonation, phishing attacks and scams, ID theft scams, and so on. This leads us to another fact that most of these threats are run through social media platforms only. The most significant vulnerability of an organization is the human factor. Contrarily, there are human activities online that are disguised as regular social media activities. Now, this is precisely where usually a top-level of social engineering is in action as cybercriminals execute all kinds of online scams, frauds, thefts, and schemes with the ai

The Internet and social media have become a significant part of our lives. Not just teens, but adults also love spending most of their time online. And why shouldn’t they? After all, it is an effective way of connecting with people in the 21st century. Social media is being widely used as a platform to share one’s opinions and thoughts with the world. Everyone wants to be heard, and platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat offer just the right amount of attention to them. But what if a group of people starts misusing these platforms? What if sharing these opinions become targeting a particular person and directing hate towards them? Social Media is an excellent way to interact and engage with people, but things spread faster than you can imagine. Teens are using social media, and digital messaging as a convenient method to befriend people, and build and maintain relationships with them. But this level of easy connectivity might result in possible troubling and non