Social Networking on Facebook Declared Unsafe

As per the executives attending the Computerworld Security Forum in Malaysia in the first week of April 2010, social networking sites like Facebook along with offering a plethora of opportunities, also paves way for many dangers.

Remarkably, with almost 400 Million users, Facebook is considered to be one of the most famous social applications across the globe. All these social applications such as Facebook are designed so that users can access online content and share some data as well.

However, unfortunately, over half a billion people on these social networking sites have disclosed huge amount of their private information. There is a great possibility for third parties to gain an access to the information through applications installed on social networking sites like games and social interaction tools.

For example, Joe Lim, (Malaysia) country head, e-Cop (a security firm), claimed that only Facebook has more than 55,000 external applications, as per the news published by pcworld.com on April 12, 2010.

Sadly, the Sophos Security Threat Report disclosed that almost 57% of users using social networking websites were attacked by spam, with 30% coming from phishing assaults, up 42% as compared to 2009.

On being questioned by a conference attendee whether Facebook should be banned in the offices or not, Alex Ng, Product Manager of Southeast Asia, Kaspersky Lab, said that banning Facebook can lead to various other challenges for users, implying that they would be able to find a method to access the application, as per the news published by toptechreviews.net on April 12, 2010.

Finally, to protect data while using these social networking websites, Ng advised that for sites like Facebook, users should make a bookmark for the log-in page, or should type the URL straightaway into the browser address bar. Also, users should avoid clicking on links in e-mails and only divulge their confidential data on fully secure websites.

Lim from e-Cop stated that users should be aware of all the latest malware and phishing scams to avoid such scams, as per the news published by pcworld.com on April 12, 2010.

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» SPAMfighter News - 4/22/2010