Chapter 4 - Facilitators and relevant factors

4.1 Social networking - Future threats and developments

As Internet adoption rates increase and social media access expands as a result, we will see more attacks targeting social networks and their inhabitants. As more consumers progressively favour social media as a means of communication over email, we can expect to see social media increasingly being used to deploy and propagate malware and scams instead of traditional spam [155].

Still, consumers will likely continue to share increasing amounts of personal data either privately with industry or openly on social networking platforms, making themselves increasingly at risk of compromise. The Internet of Everything and wearable technologies can only expand the opportunities for consumers to broadcast their lives virtually.