Social media attacks

Back in the 90s, many social engineering attacks were executed in person, including manipulating people to get unauthorized physical access to an office or physically retrieving papers with data from the office trash bins (a technique known as dumpster diving). However, in-person attacks carry a higher risk of being caught or identified if the attack is not successfully executed.

On the other hand, virtual attacks came with the advantage of anonymity, in which the risk of being identified or caught is less likely to happen. And now attackers are also leveraging the popularity of social media sites as a channel to impersonate people and execute a plurality of scams.

With billions of active users, Facebook is one of the most popular social media sites, which also makes it one of the favorite platforms used by attackers to scam people using social engineering. However, the following attacks are not limited to Facebook since attackers use other platforms such...