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- The price of a hacked Netflix subscription is around $12
- Using a hacked account is very dangerous
- Hacked Social Media Accounts Generate Fake Engagement
On a regular basis, the company Whizcase publishes a study on the prices charged for hacked accounts on the dark web. It has just released the results for the year 2023, which concerns the major streaming platforms and the main social networks.
It is therefore necessary to pay 15 dollars per month for access to a hacked Apple Music account, 14 dollars for Disney+, or 12 dollars for Netflix and Spotify. It’s a little less for Twitch and Amazon Prime Video: 11 and 9 dollars.
As for social networks, it costs 45 dollars for access to a LinkedIn account, 12 dollars for Facebook identifiers, 12 dollars for Discord and Instagram, and 10 dollars for Twitter.
What are hacked accounts used for?
Faced with rising prices, some Internet users could be tempted by the idea of paying a few euros in exchange for access to an account, but the experts at Whizcase strongly advise against it.
And for good reason, these practices are totally illegal but also very dangerous. This is because the accounts in question may contain malware and other very concrete cybersecurity threats. This can therefore expose you to personal information theft, and in the worst cases to financial data leaks or identity theft.
With regard to social networks, one might wonder what is the real interest of controlling an account whose owner is unknown to us? Analysts explain: “Instead of selling their ‘loot’, many hackers use compromised accounts to operate ‘sophisticated bot farms’ to manipulate social media engagement. »
They add : “The advantage of this method over creating bot accounts directly is that the hacked accounts originally belonged to real people, which means manipulation campaigns will be much harder for platforms to detect. »
How to protect against risks?
As you can see, account credential theft is commonplace, and it doesn’t just happen to others. To better protect against this, it is advisable to use multi-factor authentication, which considerably hampers cybercriminals.
Using a VPN is also a plus for your cybersecurity, as well as deploying an antivirus adapted to your needs. We have also concocted a guide that lists the best solutions available on the market.
