In the last one week, several Instagram accounts belonging to celebrities and media practitioners have been taken over by hackers.
Olori Supergal, Mr 2Kay, Ogbeni Adan, Tunde Ednut and Nse Ikpe Etim among others have been locked out of their Instagram handles. The hackers have been demanding to some sort of ransom before releasing the accounts to the owners.
This is not the first times hackers have targeted Nigerian individuals and businesses: celebs like 2face, Wizkid, Flavour, Dbanj, TheNetng website and several others have been hacked in the past and has led many people to be more ‘security conscious’ with their digital assets.
However this new wave may not be unconnected to a recent craze for ‘verification’. The blue ticks that validate a person’s or business’ identity is also used as a status symbol for some users, causing them to ignore otherwise warning signs.
Video director Kemi Adetiba relayed her own experience, saying she got a suspicious email, asking her to log into a website to get ‘verified’. ‘It comes from an email added mail@instagramverifier.com. Please do not click…’ she wrote.
Phishing as it’s called, is how hackers obtain sensitive information- usernames, passwords, credit card numbers- by pretending to be emails from a trusted source. It then links to another site where the information is collected and used maliciously.
Several international celebrities have fallen prey to phishers that have hacked into their phones and computers to steal nude photos. Even Google and Facebook have lost $100 million to phishing scams.
To avoid hacks such as this, it is best to ignore and delete any emails from untrusted senders as well as understand that social media websites, banks and any organization that requires personal information will never redirect to a third party website.
