Cybercriminals targeting social media: Facebook and Instagram are becoming phishers’ favorites

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Social media phishing, primarily Facebook and Instagram, saw the highest quarter- over-quarter growth of any industry with a 74.7 percent increase, according to the Vade Secure Phishers’ Favorites report for Q1 2019.

While Facebook has been in the top 10 since report’s inception, Instagram cracked the top 25 for the first time, taking the #24 spot on the Phishers’ Favorites list.

With the headlines about Facebook storing hundreds of millions of user passwords in plain text, and requiring some new users’ email passwords in order to sign up, Vade Secure believes that hackers could have been taking advantage of the confusion and concerns of Facebook users to lure them into clicking on phishing pages.

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