Technological advancement and such a massive increase in the number of socials in our lives has meant that today most young people live and grow along with the socials of the moment.
Nowadays almost all the world’s population has a smartphone that they use not only to feel with a person near or far but to share moments, to tell their lives, and today also to pay at the restaurant or any online store bypassing the so-called credit cards that are saved on their smartphone. With the technology that advances, a danger emerges that should not be underestimated: the online security of our profiles and emails.
Often our social profiles or the account of our bank are linked to our email, the latter plays a key role because it is a digital collector of our privacy and our savings.
We have the pleasure to talk about this topic with Alessio Mattarese, an expert in social web security who recovers hundreds of hacked social profiles every year.
HI ALESSIO! PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF AND TELL US HOW YOU STARTED TO TAKE YOUR FIRST STEPS IN THE FIELD OF SOCIAL WEB SECURITY?
Hi, My name is Alessio Mattarese I’m 29 years old and I’m from Naples an Italian city. I started to take my first steps on Instagram back in 2016. Immediately I met a lot of people who have gradually become my friends, collaborators or clients. I specialized in online security in 2019.
Every once in a while I received some messages from clients or acquaintances who asked me for advice on how to retrieve their Instagram account. From that moment on, I decided I wanted to specialize in this field to try to help people who were victims of phishing attacks on Instagram.
WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CASES OF PISHING ATTEMPTS TO HACK SOCIAL ACCOUNTS?
I’ll give you two very simple examples! First, millions of people use Instagram to share moments of their life and that’s why their profile becomes an album of memories, not making a backup when that happens they are willing to pay certain amounts of money to recover all the material.
The second case concerns all those who have created a real business thanks to socials and they can’t lose their account at all and often pay really high amounts of money. 99% of the cases that pay these impostors never get their profile back because hackers get paid through fictitious accounts and then disappear.
HOW TO PREVENT THESE ATTACKS?
1) You have to be very careful with phishing emails (fake emails from banks, fake fines, fake collaboration for influencers or fake orders still unpaid).
2) Always make sure you have a secure password, always have two-factor authentication and always have a clean email that is not linked to sites that send spam.
DO YOU NEED TO SET AND CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD OFTEN?
Only if you have any doubt that someone knows our passwords or if you have any doubt that you have clicked on some suspicious link by email or messages you receive on social media, by email or even by text message.
It is good to remember that never ever will a social or provider ask you to provide your login details.
EVEN IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, WHO SHOULD YOU CONTACT?
First of all you have to go to the police in your neighbourhood to make a complaint because there are many cases where hackers can use the data to scam people or anything else that could get you into serious trouble.
WHEN DOES THE PROFILE BECOME UNRECOVERABLE?
You can rest assured that no social profile is unrecoverable.
ARE THERE ANY PROFILES THAT ARE MORE ATTRACTIVE TO BE HACKED, SO TO SPEAK?
There are two types of hackers. Those who go for the masses, others, instead, point big profiles to steal conversations, photos or even the profile.
THANKS FOR THIS CLARIFICATION ALESSIO!
Thank you for your invitation. To know more about me, you can follow me on Instagram @alessiomattarese
