Social media is the two way communication in Web 2.0 and it means to communicate / share / interact with an individual or with a large audience. Social media marketing and social networking have now become an essential part of brand management planning for an organization. Social networking websites are the most famous websites on the Internet and millions of people use them everyday to engage and connect with other people. Social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus seem to be the most popular websites on the Internet. The usage of these websites depends on the purpose of the user, for example an organizations might use these websites to create a positive image of a brand or to communicate with the clients / customer base and to simply show their presence on the famous websites. Unlike organizations, an individual may also use these websites for several other purposes, for example to find a job, to build a network with professionals, to connect with like-minded people, and for fun. So my point is that the usage depends on the purpose, and let’s suppose you can use these websites for a good purpose as well as for a bad purpose. Since social networking websites are very famous, hackers and spammers are also active on these websites and might use them to gather confidential information. Yes, social networking websites play an important role in gathering relevant information of an individual and organization. The privacy and security issues related to social networking websites are not new and it is not very easy to fight these problems because of the large number of users, but they are still important to discuss. So what are the some security risks that an organization and individual might face because of social networking websites? Security Risks of Social Media There are so many ways that a hacker might use them for a bad purpose, but in general social networking websites are famous for: Information gathering (intelligence gathering) Phishing Fraud Spamming In simple words, these websites are good for hackers to hack. In this article I will discuss how and why social media websites are dangerous, and how an attacker might use them (I will discuss some examples). How do Hackers Do It? Social Engineering Information gathering is the first and an important step of hacking (in my view, the success ratio is directly proportional with the information), and the social networking websites have the information which is required. For example: It was very common to hack an email account by using a social engineering technique, and …