Hacked UK Facebook accounts ‘sold on to peddle hate’
Call for sites that sell hijacked Twitter and Facebook accounts to be shut
HACKED UK Facebook and Twitter accounts are being sold online for as little as £1, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found, as experts warn that the social media profiles are being used to peddle hate.
The hijacked accounts have either been inactive for a while, so the user may not realise they have been stolen, or the owners could have been victims of a large data breach, such as those at Equifax, Talk Talk or Uber.
The accounts are hacked into and assigned new passwords before being sold on openly accessible websites.
Often the profiles are hollowed out, leaving only the friends list, so the buyer has a ready-made contacts list to bombard with messages. Experts have told the Telegraph that the accounts are being bought by people who could use them to push hate speech and politically motivated messages to the top of social media news feeds.
Some accounts still have the original users’ name, so their friends may believe the information is coming from a reputable source. They might also contain personal information, such as birthdays, photographs, emails and phone numbers, raising fears of identity fraud. The accounts are sold in bulk, so a customer could buy thousands and use each one to share a post, making it trend on Facebook or Twitter.
Experts last night called for the sites selling the accounts to be shut down, while the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it would look into the websites uncovered. An ICO spokesman said: “Organisations must treat personal data fairly and in line with the law. That includes keeping it secure.”
The revelations come amid the growing privacy scandal surrounding social media websites. On Wednesday, Matt Hancock, the Secretary for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, will meet Facebook executives to discuss recent data breaches.
One site identified by the Telegraph is selling UKbased Facebook accounts “with real SIM cards, birthday and location information included”. It also allows bulk purchases. The older the account, the more expensive it is – rising to $40 (£29) for a 2006-registered profile. On another site, one UK account is on sale for $1.50 (£1.07), discounted from $5.
A concerned social media
‘These sites… allow you to buy UK social media accounts with real followers’
expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “These sites should be shut down. The majority allow you to buy UK social media accounts with real followers.”
Facebook said it is investigating the issue of its accounts being sold online.
Twitter said it “strictly prohibits” the buying and selling of accounts and that anyone who buys accounts or followers is “often purchasing fake or hacked accounts”.
Facebook has suspended a Canadian data company after allegations it may have improperly accessed the personal data of Facebook users. The social media giant said AggregateIQ, which played a role in the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit, may have improperly received users’ data.
AggregateIQ said: “We have never managed, nor did we ever have access to, any Facebook data or database allegedly obtained improperly by Cambridge Analytica.”