The cyber security branch and challenges are one of the most common ordeals of the day presently in our world, and these happen for numerous reasons, such as to gain access to our account, information, and resources that lie therein. Since the advent of technology and social presence, our details and accounts continuously face numerous cyber threats, and one needs to really be careful and as well do all it takes to secure their account. I've once been a victim of a security branch on one of my social media accounts, and today I'll love to tell you all about it.
Sometimes in the year 2015, I was just snuffing through the internet just like every other day. At this particular time, I was on Facebook, and while checking out my friends publications, I saw a post from one of my friends that attracted me. Their post was like a bot that uses your already existing pictures in your profile to generate how you'll look when you're old. I was fascinated by this and wanted to see how I'll look as well, and beneath the particular post on that, my friends post a button that says click if you'll love to see yours.
My curiosity gets the better of me, and I click on that link, although I've always been careful with my account prior to this, but today I felt I was in a safe zone, so after clicking the link, it shows up like all of this Facebook game that you'll grant access to see your friends, see who you like, and can even post on your behalf. I should have known something was odd after seeing that it can post on my behalf, but I felt it probably needs to have access to post on my behalf before I can see what it'll generate, since the same was what happened on that my friend's profile.
To cut the long story short, I gave it access to do all that is requested, and if it did generate the picture of an older version of me that I love and almost forgot the bot still has authorization to still access my friends and as well post on my behalf, about a week after that particular day, I woke up just like every other day and decided to check what's going on in Facebook. On getting there, I saw over 100 notifications and messages, and I knew immediately that someone must be wrong. I mean, it's not even my birthday, so why so many notifications?
I opened the first message and saw an angry comment from a friend who's enquiring about the nonsense I posted on her profile. I said I don't know what she's talking about and decided to go check it out. On getting to her profile, I realized the bot I gave access to publish on my behalf changed its name and now sends an explicit post to all of my friends profiles saying something like '5-year-old Janet rapes by fathers; click the link to watch.' I just used Janet as an example because, depending on the person's name, it'll tag them as the person being raped by their father.
Immediately I knew I'm in trouble, and as I checked through, although other friends profiles, the same post was theirs, and all of the notifications and messages I got contained angry messages from friends telling me to immediately delete that rubbish from their profile; some even went as far as abusing or cursing me, and I'm in awe as to how all of these must have happened because I didn't send anything like that. Then I remember giving that bot access a week ago, so I immediately rush to my settings and revolve the access I gave the bot and every other one I found there.
All of that day and week was spent mostly on apologizing and deleting messages from angry Facebook friends; some even went as far as getting my number and threatening me over the phone. Well, there's nothing I can do but apologize and delete, although some of my friends understood what must have happened and didn't overreact than to advise me to be more careful; some even went as far as standing by me and defending me from other angry friends who were abusing me over the issue on Facebook. I'm sure Oluwadrey can relate to this.
That incident taught me a very hard lesson, and since then I've been very skeptical about most of this bot on all of my social media accounts. When any requests for permission to access my friends and account, I make sure to check if all they'll be able to do is check what I like and not have access to post on my behalf because I won't want to face victims of the same experience again.
Ironically, that issue that happened on Facebook 9 years ago resurfaces this this earlier this month, because when I logged in to my account on the fourth of this month, I saw a notification that my account had been suspended because I went against one of their community standards, and I've got 180 days to appeal. To cut a long story short, I appealed even though I don't know why I was suspended, but after 10 days I finally regained access to my account and found out I was suspended because of the post that bot sent on my behalf in 2015.
All photos taken and edited on canva.
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