The All Progressives Congress (APC) has alerted Nigerians of the many risks involved in accessing social media contents using the Virtual Private Network (VPN).
The party raised the alert in a statement issued by Sen. John Akpanudoedehe, the National Secretary of its Caretaker and Extra-ordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), on Tuesday in Abuja.
It explained that VPN is vulnerable to the heinous activities of criminal hackers, who could steal data and monies in bank accounts.
”The APC warns legitimate private and public entities operating in the country to avoid the many dangers of exposing themselves to cybercrimes through the use of VPN, which is not adequately secured.
”This advisory is necessary because despite the massive compliance by Nigerians to the Federal Government’s suspension of Twitter operations in the country, some individuals in the country have resorted to VPN to access Twitter, whose unwholesome activities are detrimental to the peace and public order in the country,” said the party.
It, therefore, advised those using the VPN to desist in their own interests in order to avoid the following risks: data theft, illegal access to strategic company documents and possible economic espionage.
According to the party, VPN users expose their devices to vulnerabilities, because the network allows third-party access to personal data.
It said VPN could also change users’ location to another country, thus compromising data integrity.
”Your record can be traced to another country that is not yours, with all the risks that entails.
”Many individuals and organisations using VPN have lost their investments after compromising the security of their devices,” APC said.
It, therefore, advised Nigerians to avoid installing or using VPN to access social networking sites to protect their privacy and security online.
”This is in our individual and collective interest,” it said.