real life

Here's the truth about who's really hacking into your Facebook account.

Guys, prepare yourselves. We’ve got bad news.

The person most likely to hack into your Facebook account isn’t some anonymous creep on the internet, they’re actually someone you know.

In fact, they could be sitting next to you right now. Wearing their comfy clothes, watching Netflix with you, and offering to make you a cuppa, all while harbouring a dark, dark secret…

They’ve seen ALL of the GIFs that you sent to your friends last night.

According to a recent study, 24 percent of people admitted to hacking into Facebook accounts that belong to their family and friends.

Yep. Your boyfriend could be scrolling through your Facebook messages right now. Image via FOX.

The University of British Columbia surveyed over 1300 Facebook users to gather data. Their findings proved that almost a quarter of people creep on the social media accounts of their family members, friends, or significant others.

Yep. Your boyfriend could be scrolling through your Facebook messages right now.

It’s so common that the University of British Columbia coined a term for it: social insider attacks.

The term, defined by the security community, means that attacker knows the victim and gains access to the social media account by physically using the victim’s device – whether it's a smartphone, tablet, laptop or anything else.

“Our combined findings indicate that social insider attacks are common, often have serious emotional consequences, and have no simple mitigation.”

According to the data collected, there are five key reasons why someone you know might hack into your Facebook account: fun, curiosity, jealousy, animosity, and utility.

Jealously is the number one reason people hack. Image via Netflix.
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The study cites jealously as the number one reason people commit social insider attacks. Next was curiosity, and then fun.

Parents reported hacking into their children's accounts to see what they were up to. And friends did it thinking it would just be a harmless joke.

One of the researchers behind the paper, Ivan Beschastnikh, told Mashable: "We initially wanted to build technical solutions to mitigate these attacks, but we soon discovered that we really did not understand them well.

"One recommendation that we make is that Facebook could provide better support for monitoring passive account activity," Beschastnikh added.

"A log that cannot be altered and that records passive actions [such as viewing already-read messages] as well as active actions in the account would (1) allow victims to identify these attacks, and (2) deter potential perpetrators."

The case for realistic images on Instagram on Mamamia Out Loud. 

Have you ever hacked into someone's Facebook account?