One of the biggest headlines this week is the hacking of the British Army’s Twitter account. The @britisharmy handle has over 360,000 followers and was taken over by a Cryptocurrency scam trying to promote NFTs.
This high-profile hacking got us thinking – are any of our social media accounts really safe? TheNerdScore.com decided to dig into this further, and get a true understanding of just how bad the social media hacking situation is in the United States right now. Here are some of the key findings:
1 in 3 Americans Report Having Their Social Media Hacked
We conducted a survey of 5,000 active social media users in the US and found that 33.7% of them have had a social media profile hacked. But what did this look like? How did they know they had been hacked? What did the hacker do? Here are the answers (the question was multiple-choice):
- 59.7% said the hacker sent messages to their friends
- 38.3% said that the hacker posted on their behalf
- 32.3% said that the hacker changed their password
- 16.2% said that the hacker stole their personal information
Perhaps the most shocking of all is the 16.2% that reported a loss of personal information. At that point, it goes far beyond just losing access to social media and becomes a case of identity theft.
Facebook is Hacked More Than Ever Other Platform
We asked respondents to tell us which of their profiles were hacked, and Facebook was the clear winner, with 68.4% claiming that their profile had been taken over.
In second place was Instagram, with 24.3% of Instagram users reporting hacking. This was followed by Twitter at 13.5%. The good news is that the large majority of accounts were recoverable, with 84.8% regaining access.
25 to 35 Year Olds Are Hacked The Most
The number of social media users that fall within the 25-35 age group is significantly higher than in older age groups, so it’s no real surprise that they are hacked the most. The second-highest age group reporting hackings was those 50 years and older.
Source: A July 2022 survey (ran by TheNerdScore.com) of 5,000 American social media users
