During my studies in information security major, the term "social engineering" was often repeated in reference to the tricks that hackers can follow to influence the victim to obtain information useful to them in the hacking process. These tricks are mainly aimed at gaining the victim's trust and obtaining information in a manner that does not raise suspicion. During my extensive research on social engineering, it became clear to me that it is not only used in the field of information security, but also in fraud and fraud, and it may be used at the community level to influence public opinion.

So social engineering is a set of tricks and strategies that target either obtaining certain information for the purpose of using it against the target, or influencing the thinking and behavior of a person or society through a set of steps that the person who performs the process of social engineering follows. These steps are first to collect information about the target from Through various means such as social media or the people around you, then the appropriate attack plan is developed using the information and then the target is acquired by gaining his confidence.

A relative of mine told me about a scam that occurred with him personally in which social engineering was used extensively, as the fraudster gathered information about the target person and his family members from the people surrounding the target, claiming that he was one of his relatives from a distant location, and through the information he learned that one of the victim's relatives works Director of a company and that there are financial dealings between the victim and this person, then the fraudster went to the victim and convinced him that he was on the part of the company director and that he was coming to take a certain amount of money and told him some details about the work and the family, considering him working in the company for a long time, and indeed the fraudster got the money No one saw him after that.

So some simple information about us, if used correctly, could be the reason for us to be stolen and potentially hurt us in one way or another.

Social engineering is also used in digital hacking operations, so you receive a message telling you to log in to the Facebook website to get a course, for example, or see something that you may be interested in, and the link will convert you to a Facebook-like page, of course you trust Facebook and you log in from the fake page Here, your data is stolen.

This is one of the methods that may be used against us, and one of the other methods is for a site to ask us to create an account or to log in through the mail directly, studies say that about 98% of us will log in directly!

One of the most popular social engineering methods that are used against us is the exploitation of personal information on social media, impersonation, or the exploitation of trends and rumors.

Have you ever been under the influence of social engineering? And in your opinion, what are the means by which we can avoid falling victim to such operations?