Habitual Facebook users easily fall for scams

Washington: A new study has indicated that individuals who are very active on Facebook become highly susceptible to "social media phishing" attacks by criminals.

The study observed that habitual Facebook users become suspects because they automatically respond to requests without considering how they were connected with those sending the requests, how long they have known them, or who else was connected with them.

Dr. Arun Vishwanath, author of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication study, said that social media phishing was the attack vector of choice among cyber criminals and had been implicated in crimes ranging from home invasion to cyber bullying, illegal impersonation of individuals and organization, and espionage.

The study showed that predictors of habitual use of Facebook included frequent interactions with the platform, a large number of friend connections, and individuals' inability to regulate their social media consumption.

Vishwanath added that scams attempt to trick people into accepting friend requests and gathering intel from them.