How do Cyber Criminals use social network for committing online frauds ?

Cybercriminals use social networks to gather information, identify potential targets, and then craft social engineering attacks. They may impersonate trusted individuals or organizations, use personal information to create convincing scams, or spread malware through malicious links. Social networks provide a wealth of personal data that cybercriminals can use to personalize attacks and make them more believable. Cybercriminals can create fake profiles or mimic real users to trick individuals into divulging information or performing actions against their security. This risk is associated with persons identities. Identity theft can happen to anyone who exposes too much personal information online on various social networking sites. To protect one self, get to know the security and privacy settings, and configure them to protect from identity theft. One in five online adults (21 percent) have reported of becoming a victim of either social or mobile cybercrime and 39 percent of social network users have been victims of profile hacking, scam or fake link.