Corporate identity theft or brand abuse on social media encompasses various tactics, from fake profiles impersonating the brand to distributing malicious content under the brand’s name.
What is social media phishing?
In the digital age, social media has become integral to our lives and businesses, providing opportunities to connect, share content, and interact with diverse communities, including customers. However, this growing reliance has also increased phishing, fraud, and scam campaigns in these virtual environments. These criminal practices have evolved, including corporate identity theft to deceive users and customers and obtain confidential information or illicit enrichment. Social media impersonation, or brand abuse, involves creating fake accounts that impersonate the official profiles of well-known companies or relevant individuals.
In organizations, impersonators often meticulously copy logos, images, and communication styles to appear authentic. They frequently use active brand communication or promotion campaigns, copying them to attract customers maliciously. Its primary purpose is to trick users into revealing personal or financial information or to damage the company’s image. The consequences of corporate identity theft are often severe. Customers lose trust in the brand, which decreases sales and engagement. In addition, the organization may face legal problems if customers suffer financial losses due to impersonation or if it has been used to commit other illicit acts.
Threat of the usurpation of corporate identity on social networks
The usurpation of corporate identity on social networks entails a series of
threats to organizations:
Profile forgery
Profile falsification is the basis of corporate identity theft on social networks. Criminals create fake profiles that mimic legitimate companies to trick users into obtaining personal or financial information. These counterfeit profiles can become very convincing and even indistinguishable without research. To appear authentic, they use logos, images, and brand language similar to the company’s. They often post relevant content to appear genuine and gain followers. Once they have gained users’ trust, these profiles are frequently used for various scams. These can include promoting fake offers, asking for payment details for non-existent products, or directing users to fraudulent websites where they are asked to provide personal information.
Phishing through social media
In the context of social media, fraudsters use sophisticated techniques to send direct messages or posts that appear to be from a recognized organization or institution whose identity they have usurped. Cybercriminals have adapted these tactics to the social media environment, taking advantage of users’ trust and familiarity with these platforms. Thus, they use social engineering tactics to trick users into obtaining the sensitive information they seek. In a typical phishing scenario, criminals create fake profiles or pages that resemble those of a legitimate company. Then, they send enticing messages or posts that may include special offers, contests, or fake security alerts to lure users into clicking on malicious links. Once the user clicks on the link, they may be directed to a fake website that looks like the company’s official website. Then, they are ordered to enter personal or financial information, which the criminals collect.
Posting malicious content
One of the most damaging threats of brand abuse on social media is the posting of malicious content.
Malicious content can take many forms, from false and misleading information to links to dangerous websites or malicious software. It can damage a company’s reputation, sow discord, create conflicts, deceive customers, and steal valuable information.
Service Impersonation
Impersonation is another significant threat to social media in the context of corporate identity theft. Criminals create accounts that impersonate the brand’s customer service, directing users to fake or dangerous sites or luring them into scams. These fraudulent services range from non-existent product offers to false customer support promises. Users, believing they are interacting with the real company, provide personal or financial information, make payments or make decisions based on incorrect information. Spoofing significantly damages an organisation’s reputation. Customers who have been misled often associate their negative experiences with the real company, even holding it responsible for lack of sufficient vigilance and protection, which can lead to loss of trust and loyalty. There can also be a direct financial impact. If customers are tricked into buying fraudulent products or services, sales decrease. In addition, the organisation may face significant costs to mitigate the damage, restore its reputation or legally prove its lack of responsibility for the crime.
Preventing impersonation on social networks
Preventing social media phishing is critical to protecting your customers and your organization. A good strategy on how to avoid social media impersonation needs to include:
Monitoring social networks
By continuously monitoring social media, organizations can detect fraudulent use of their corporate identity on social media and prevent cybercriminals from using the brand with impunity to deceive customers. Continuous monitoring and analysis of the data it provides also help to identify emerging patterns and trends of brand abuse and proactively respond to the threat.
Establish a proactive protection strategy
When an organisation has a proactive social media brand protection strategy in place, the likelihood of the threat of maliciously targeted brand abuse decreases.
The proactive strategy allows the organization to stay ahead of brand abuse, detecting identity theft on social networks in real-time so that the organization can proceed with its cancellation before it causes significant damage. You may be interested in our publication→ Proactive security: what is it and why use it to prevent and detect threats and cyberattacks?
Being active in social networks
Although it may seem paradoxical, not opening corporate profiles on different social networks or remaining inactive on them not only does not protect against identity theft but also favors it. Having very active profiles on social networks allows users to become familiar with the brand’s communication and more easily detect imitators. In addition, active profiles simplify checking a profile’s integrity, which raises suspicions among users.
Protecting the brand with advanced technologies
The continued sophistication of cyber-attacks requires organizational protection that is up to the task and uses advanced strategies and technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation to provide the proper responses at the right time. Solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning identify fake profiles and malicious activity more effectively and quickly than traditional methods. In addition, they can automatically track active or latent fraudulent campaigns on social media until they are completely eliminated.
Consequences of corporate identity theft on social networks
Brand abuse often has serious consequences for an organisation:
Financial losses
Corporate identity theft on social networks leads to a decrease in brand value due to the loss of trust and a decrease in revenue due to the loss of sales to deceive customers. After a successful corporate identity theft on social networks, the organization must invest in powerful communication campaigns to regain some of its client´s trust. Furthermore, when cybercriminals use the stolen corporate identity to engage in illegal activities, fees are incurred to cover timely legal actions.
Reputational damage
A brand’s reputation has a direct impact on its value. Corporate identity impersonation on social media damages an organization’s reputation and brand. Fraudsters use the company’s brand to spread false information or engage in unethical and criminal behavior, negatively affecting the organization’s image.
Legal problems
Corporate impersonation raises legal issues when fraudsters use the brand to engage in illegal activities, as the organization will initially be held liable until it proves the impersonation. In addition, defrauded customers may keep the organization vicariously liable for the deception due to a lack of sufficient vigilance and protection and claim restitution for their financial loss from the organization, either legally or administratively. This also implies a legal or administrative defense.
Loss of customer trust
After interacting with or hearing about fake accounts that have impersonated the corporate identity, customers perceive that the organization is not taking adequate measures to protect its brand and, indirectly, them from scams.
They then become wary of interacting with the company on social media, proceed to avoid it, and are less likely to remain loyal to it.
Protect yourself from social media impersonation with Kartos by Enthec
Kartos Corporate Threat Watchbots, the cyber-surveillance platform developed by Enthec, continuously and automatically monitors the web and social networks to detect domains, subdomains, websites, and social profiles identical or similar to your organization’s. Thanks to its self-developed Artificial Intelligence, false positives in findings are eliminated. In addition, Kartos monitors the phishing, fraud, and scam campaigns with corporate identity theft detected until their deactivation, with identification of the countries in which they are active, data, and alarms in real-time. Since this year, the Kartos platform has also offered a Takedown Service for fraudulent social profiles, domains and subdomains, and cloned websites detected by the platform. Contact us if you want more information on how Kartos can help you protect your brand from cloning and abuse on the internet and social networks.