What Brands Can Do to Circumvent Social Hacking

Originally published on ClickZ.com

Guest post by Sundeep Kapur, Author, Digital Evangelist and Director of Strategic Marketing for NCR Corporation.

A simple heist. I went for an afternoon stroll in my grandparents’ neighborhood (Mumbai, India) when I literally bumped into a young man on a bicycle. The “bump” slowed him down, I heard the words “thief,” and saw a group of people chasing him – the young man was caught. The strategy used by these thieves was innocent: young men play ball, the ball enters your community, three young men enter your community to look for the ball, two men steal stuff, a small truck meets them on a distant road, and they are off!

It happens online too. You get a “connection” request on social media. (I used the word connection to imply no one particular social media channel – it could be Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or even LinkedIn.) It’s from a brand you know. You join the forum and start paying attention to the discussions. You soon start noticing a couple of individuals who are actively involved on this brand’s page and are receiving “affirmations” (likes/endorsements/retweets) from the brand. You now get a friend request to connect personally, you do, and you end up downloading something malicious.

Your personal information is harvested and the trouble begins.

The state of South Carolina lost a lot of consumer data to an international hacking cartel – more than 4.5 million records stolen. The People’s Liberation Army of China (PLA) is being blamed for a coordinated hack on U.S. assets. My travel company sent me an affiliate offer with a malicious link.

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