  We live in a virtual world where actual lifestyles are replicated. The
growing reliance on the use of social media networks worldwide has resulted in
great concern for information security. One of the factors popularizing the
social media platforms is how they connect people worldwide to interact, share
content, and engage in mutual interactions of common interest that cut across
geographical boundaries. Behind all these incredible gains are digital crime
equivalence that threatens the physical socialization. Criminal-minded elements
and hackers are exploiting Social Media Platforms (SMP) for many nefarious
activities to harm others. As detection tools are developed to control these
crimes, hackers' tactics and techniques are constantly evolving. Hackers are
constantly developing new attacking tools and hacking strategies to gain
malicious access to systems and attack social media network thereby making it
difficult for security administrators and organizations to develop and
implement the proper policies and procedures necessary to prevent the hackers'
attacks. The increase in cyber-attacks on the social media platforms calls for
urgent and more intelligent security measures to enhance the effectiveness of
social media platforms. This paper explores the mode and tactics of hackers'
mode of attacks on social media and ways of preventing their activities against
users to ensure secure social cyberspace and enhance virtual socialization.
Social media platforms are briefly categorized, the various types of attacks
are also highlighted with current state-of-the-art preventive mechanisms to
overcome the attacks as proposed in research works, finally, social media
intrusion detection mechanism is suggested as a second line of defense to
combat cybercrime on social media networks
