Internet has changed the conversation pattern of yesteryears completely, as now people prefer interaction with their near ones through social media. The rise of chat sites like Omegle is one step up, where you can connect with the strangers from all parts of the world. Interestingly, Omegle besides an army of chat lovers, have spammers and hackers to exploit the innocent users.
Beware Of Hackers
Omegle being a free chat site, where anyone can enter without revealing their identity, carry a potential danger. You hardly know whom you are dealing with. Also, when people text and video chat, they become too friendly and drop-in their real identities. The hackers there pick the information for their vested interests. The result could be drastic, as you can be the victims of scamming, stalking, harassment, and blackmail.
How They Do It?
Contrary to the popular belief that Omegle doesn’t save all chats, it has been recently revealed that it does save all chat logs. In the Hacker News, an IT expert Indrajeet Bhuyen revealed Omegle saves screenshots of all the chat logs. That saved information becomes prone to hacking. The chatters become easy target, when those chat-logs reveal some explicit material along with the real identities of the chatters.
The study of Bhuyan puts a warning sign for the Omegle users, who get carried away while chatting with the member of opposite sex. They lose their guard and reveal information that even Omegle doesn’t ask from them. Bhuyen, through a simple python script, explained how Omegle chat is hacked and automatically downloaded and saved on the website.
He also published some chat log shots as proof, which explains how easily it is done. Especially teenagers among users naively share their personal data, which they wrongly think is safe. They always carry this perception that their chat log is deleted once their chats are over. Out of this understanding, they share private messages and reveal identities by sharing their Facebook account and other personal information.
Ways Hackers Adopt
On Omegle, you can chat with any random person present in the chat room. However, the hackers and spammers smartly posing as a girl develop a disguise to fascinate the user and begin chats. After they gain some trust of the user, they send the gullible user some malicious links to deliver some nasty undetected malware on the system to gain access to the information of a user. This malware can withstand most antiviruses to block malware.
You need to update your antivirus to handle such situations, as more updated versions are being made to curb malicious viruses. You should put command prompt and type netstat -antp or netstat –an to check the IP addresses to which your system is connected to see any trace of irregularity. Also, you must regularly install the updates on your system to stay safe.
Be Smart To Be Safe
Hackers only thrive on the naivety of people. They have an eye for the vulnerable accounts. Thus protecting yourself becomes the only option to stay safe. Your behavior on Omegle would decide your safety, as the hackers look for the identifiable information, pictures, and videos to misuse it.
You are fine and safe on Omegle, only until the time you don’t let your guards down. Omegle offers you a platform to have fun with sex chats and exchange photos & videos. However, you become easy meat for the hackers, once your face is visible in those shared videos. The scammers and hackers can pick up your photo to trace your information through social media. However, if you are smart you can have all the fun on chat site and still stay safe from blackmails & stalking.