Online social accounts are often centered on the demographic traits of their owners. At a glance, one can often tell the age, gender, location, and other related attributes of such account owners. In an inquiring mind, a question emerges: Do these attributes influence the behavior of cybercriminals when they break into social accounts?
Jeremiah Onaolapo and fellow researchers studied the influence of age and gender attributes of Facebook accounts on the activity of cybercriminals who broke into them. They discovered that the cybercriminals who breached teen accounts wrote more messages and posts than the ones who broke into adult accounts, among other findings. Details can be found in the full paper, SocialHEISTing: A Tale of Stolen Facebook Accounts, by Jeremiah Onaolapo, Nektarios Leontiadis, Despoina Magka, and Gianluca Stringhini. The paper was presented at USENIX Security 2021, a conference produced by one of the very top venues for publication of security-related research.