Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on the dark side of social media privacy and security risks of social media.

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on the dark side of social media privacy and security risks of social media.

This subculture has evolved over the years to an extent that the computer underground is now a known community. Since the 60s, hacking on social media has greatly evolved to have different classes of hackers based on different attitudes they have. A group of hackers known as white hat hackers usually break social media security networks for non-malicious reasons hence they rarely engage in cybercrime. This hacker intends to test his/her own security system, perform penetration tests or carry out vulnerability assessments.

There are those hackers that break computer security for personal gain or other malicious intentions(Subashini & Kavitha, 2011). This group of hackers is known as the black hats, and their intention is to break the security of social networks for the purpose of destroying, modifying, stealing data or making the network unusable for those who are authorized to use it. Hacking in the early 80s was not meant for attacks and monetary gain as it is today, but the top understands the system and makes some kind of logic out of the chaos.

However, the situation changed in the mid to late 80s when legislation was passed in the United States to tackle those who trespassed on computer and phone networks(Rieder, Huey-Burns, & Ott, 2012). Privacy and security issues on social media became apparent in the late 90s and early 2000s, especially in 1998 when Chris Wysopal and his friends discovered a way of shutting down the internet. This paper is going to show the privacy and security risks of social media and how they have affected people negatively.

This study fits into the psychological realm in the sense that hackers employ some psychological game when stealing social network’s user private information(Alpcan & Basar, 2010). When hacking into social media, they use the data on experiential profiles to captivate the confidence of the stranger. This technique is commonly&nbsp.referred to as social engineering, whereby influential psychological strategies are employed to capitalize on the weakest link in social networks’ security systems.