Clickbait headlines are everywhere, across the billboards, every ad campaign on the internet, TV, flyers, Youtube, Facebook, and every social media you could think of. They are sensational, they promise of containing something that you don’t know, and sometimes they are just outright ridiculous. They are annoying but they work like a charm.
Examples of some clickbait-y headlines that actually work-
This Blog will make you understand the depths of clickbait and will blow your mind as you will analyze with us the functions that go into the making and how it is actually really easy to make you believe into anything the writer will put you through, just like you did seconds ago. The blog is not going to be mindblowing or analyzing the “depths” but will help you to make it clear there are some things about clickbait that you should be careful about.
The goal is to grab a user's attention, manipulating their minds, creating an aura of mystery, withholding some information that you are sure would make the urge to click upon it multiply x10. With so many competitors in the market with the same generation of content, it is impossible to make users attract to their products or service. That is where Click baits make their appearance with exaggeration.
But how does this fooling behavior works? Like you can fool someone one time, three times the least how many false hopes, promises, quizzes, giveaways a person can endure? Actually, a lot if you believe the current market it turns out. Behavior experts believe that people are willing to sacrifice their time, put up fall hopes and endure annoyance so long as it gives them a payout, even if there’s a teeny figment of hope. Researchers also believe that clickbait relies on strong emotions such as, hunger, anxiety, happiness, grief, etc all in superlative cases, also a newspaper reported that people get more attracted to those showing "extremely negative & popular headlines" compared to those neutral headlines that garner least audiences.
For marketers, The simple theory is if you don’t make your product stand out from millions of others they would get stampeded badly. And Click Bait doesn’t have to necessarily sit on the dark side, they do serve sometimes as a good thing, just like for spreading social awareness or driving the audience into something useful, but hackers use anything they see fit to hijack the systems or just to be plain notorious and unfortunately Click baits serve as a very good medium for them.
Some clickbait now serves as an enticing path to malicious websites. These external third-party sites contain malicious codes including virus, malware, ransomware, and Trojans (allowing bad people access to your system). Clickbait is for these people simply a fun, exciting, invitation to breakthrough your systems.
Clickbait can also present itself in the form of a catchy quiz, survey, or any general information. Generally, this clickbait will ask you for your personal information, or for access to your social media account (hi, Facebook). In other cases, the baits may take you straight to a spoof website that sells low-quality goods or may even be told to download some malicious files.
Do not Give Them Everything - Skip the Quizzes as much as you can. Social media quizzes are the biggest market for these clickbait cyber-attacks. Cyber experts believe that these quizzes are serving as means for a hacker to insert or disguise links that tricks you into downloading harmful malware or steal your private personal information.
If a quiz or survey asks you for your email or signs up here option, ignore it before it can access your information, think thrice. You will be basically giving your information away at this point. Cisco’s 2015 Security Report explains that Facebook scams are the most prevalent and popular method to gain access to organizational networks. Keep your pieces of information secure, and keep your information private-don’t make the hacker's job easy for them.
Lastly, Install software that can protect you from suspicious site clickings and against harmful malware. This is not a clickbait that IGS Cleaner is the best Multifunctional PC Cleaner and great software to fend off privacy breaches and secure data. Plus it is free to download. Click Me.
