PRESENCE ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING ATTACK AMONG STUDENTS OF TWO SELECTED TERTIARY INSTITUTION IN ADAMAWA STATE

Abstract

There has been steady increase of the incidences of cyber-attacks in tertiary institutions in the last decade. These incidences are in diverse forms and focuses on students of the tertiary institutions. Students complaint of their phones and laptops being hacked. This study sought to find out how frequent undergraduate students make posts and how that relates to cyber-attack on social media at the Federal College of Education and the American University of Nigeria. The study area has a population of 3756. The study used deductive, quantitative research; therefore, hypothesis was made and tested using the Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The philosophical underpinning adopted in the study was the positivist paradigm. A structured questionnaire was employed as an instrument for data collection, and using a simple random sampling method, was distributed to students. The study focused on Facebook. The research selected 0.05 as the level of significance. It was found that there is a strong correlation between a cyber-attack and frequent activeness on social media. It found that there is a strong correlation between cyber-attack and frequenting the social media but there is no significant evidence to conclude same on the population. It suggested that further research be carried out using a qualitative research approaches so that respondents may be observed through interview.