Social Media Hijack Vulnerabilities

I know that some of you still use Facebook; that’s your business. The problem is that Facebook is like the Borg in wanting to take over your virtual life. Stop and think about all the different services you know about that can be linked so conveniently to your Facebook account. Each one represents an entry point for someone to hijack your accounts — all of them. The more links you have to some free online service (and some paid services), the more ways there are to hijack that account.

Here’s a story that describes a hijacking method using the interlinking “convenience” between such accounts. And here’s another involving cellphone text messages. These work with having to use any manipulation with phishing emails (that’s how hackers got into John Podesta’s email account), where you are enticed to click on a link that allows someone else to take over your accounts or even your computer.

Now I realize that whenever a weakness gets posted like that, it often results in some kind of code fix or procedural change, but there are new exploits every week. Meanwhile, some of these things will never be fixed because big companies just don’t give a rat’s butt about their users. That business of cross-linking accounts makes them money and fixing the security flaws costs them money. It has to be a problem big enough to garner serious bad press before they change.

This morning my wife got a notice of someone asking for a password reset on her Facebook account; that’s a primary means to grabbing control. Fortunately, she already had her account settings pretty secure and it asked her permission first using her Gmail account. However, you need to understand that some one or more people have been trying to hijack her Gmail account already. Indeed, she’s plagued with sensitive messages about accounting and payment information from at least a couple of businesses where some person(s) unknown used her email address. Not all of this stuff is just accidental; at least once it was obvious someone was doing that in a ham-fisted effort to work the system to hijack the email account. Apparently her Gmail address is in demand.

However, I sense that the attempted Facebook hijack is likely due to her insufficient enthusiasm for some mainstream political candidate. It’s not that she says much, but having said anything at all critical of this candidate makes anyone a target, particularly if their Facebook friends include rabid activists. There was a time when political debate was routine, even if it usually amounts to soundbites of no significant depth, but this Presidential election seems to have taken on some very sinister tones previously not seen. The times, they are a-changing.

I would never suggest we take a scorched-earth approach to dumping all our social media accounts. How else would we get out our message here? Now, I dumped Facebook because it was entirely too time consuming with people trying to engage me on everything except my mission. Meanwhile, the response to my outreach was virtually nil. It was work that bore no fruit. That was my experience; you have your own worries. However, I am still utterly convinced that somewhere down the road, my resistance to Zionism will garner way more attention than I want. That’s because Zionists are breeding some very ugly plans to crush dissent. For much the same reason our political battles here in the US have reached a new level of nastiness, the same social and political combativeness will spread to agendas yet waiting the wings.

Politics have always been ugly, but as each generation gains new ways to communicate, and new social trends in what constitutes “communication,” we see fresh levels of naked hostility. As a part of the coming right-wing backlash here, the Zionists are hoping to hitch their wagon to the same power. This means we will have to stay on top of our primary means of communicating our message of mercy and love. It’s our very lack of activist enthusiasm for worldly concerns that can get us into trouble, and I’ve already run into that, though often with a certain restraint up to now. But that restraint is breaking down quickly. Don’t just surrender your ground and flee, but be as savvy as possible about the tactics involved. Count the costs; Jesus did that and still faced the Cross.