Police in Nottinghamshire have issued guidance to social media users after reporting a recent rise in Snapchat hackings. Criminals are compromising accounts to extract illicit images which are then used to blackmail their victims.
In the guidance, cyber officers are encouraging Snapchat users to update their security settings to protect them against hackers. It encourages people to use different passwords for each account you have online, use stronger passwords using three random words, enable two-step verification (2SV) and remove any outdated personal information.
“Children and young adults in Nottingham have been the most targeted”, Kirsty Jackson, a cyber protect officer with Nottinghamshire Police, said. “In many cases, a friend has accessed the victim’s account – either by guessing the login information or because the victim has poor security.
“In other cases, the victim has logged into Snapchat on a friend’s device, which has then saved the login credentials. The friend has then gone on to find private images and videos in the account’s ‘My Eyes Only’ feature, because the passcode was easy to guess. They’ve then gone on to threaten to share the images after falling out with the victim and deciding to bully them.
“We’ve also seen a rise in Snapchat accounts being hacked by organised cyber criminals for financial gain. This has seen hackers access a victim’s illicit images and threaten to leak them unless money is paid. The targeted age for this type of compromise is 20-40 years.”
Jackson advised that the best way to avoid being targeted is to never share any image that you consider to be private using a social media platform.
“Also, never share login credentials with anyone else, no matter how trusted you believe them to be or login to your account using a friend’s device as their device can become trusted to your account and login credentials can save to their device.”
Shew also urged parents to educate children to online risks and protect them from these common mistakes.
The online security guidance has been prepared by the East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU) to help people mitigate the risk of hackers accessing their social media accounts.
The guidance and information on the dangers of Snapchat being used as a sexting platform can be found here.
More information about how to manage passwords and enable two-step verification can be found on the government’s Cyber Aware website: ncsc.gov.uk.
