{"id":2025,"date":"2010-11-27T13:15:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-27T18:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbach.net\/blog\/?p=2025"},"modified":"2022-12-30T15:47:22","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T20:47:22","slug":"social-networks-are-risky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/social-networks-are-risky\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Networks Are Risky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Social<\/a>According to the Czech security firm TrustPort, social networking’s popularity and ease of use can cause users to forget its risks.\u00a0 These risks include the loss of private personal data and malware infection<\/strong>.\u00a0 Even though social networking is new, a recent IBM<\/a> (IBM<\/a>) X-Force<\/a> report<\/a> says the threats are not.\u00a0 According to IBM, traditional threats like phishing, malware, 419 fraud schemes, identity theft, data harvesting, and botnets<\/strong> now use social networks as attack vectors.<\/p>\n

\"Facebook\"Many social networking users fall victim<\/strong> to attackers offering new apps or features<\/strong> for joining the group.\u00a0 Net Security.org<\/em><\/a> cites the Facebook<\/a><\/strong> Stalker Catcher<\/a> as an example of such a scam.\u00a0 Even though this malicious app appeared in 2009, Facebook users still fall victim to it.\u00a0 To start a Stalker Catcher attack, Net Security.org<\/em> says users are lured to the group on the pretext<\/strong> that they will see exactly who and when is visiting their personal profile.\u00a0 The alleged instructions for feature activation result in nothing more and nothing less than sending group invitations to all contacts of the victim.<\/p>\n

Sunbelt Software<\/a> reports<\/a> that the latest scam targeting Facebook<\/strong> users specifically targets kids<\/strong>.\u00a0 The scam promises a free<\/strong> proxy service for those who want to bypass parental controls and blocks<\/strong> set up by schools.\u00a0 The scam tempts the victims to try the service at hxxp:\/\/myfatherisonline.com to access Facebook in school.\u00a0 Of course, when the victims visit the website, they can’t find the advertised service.\u00a0 The researchers instead found a plethora of scam attempts<\/strong>.\u00a0 The victims are faced with an affiliate site containing malware, surveys, quizzes,<\/strong> and offers for free iPhones<\/strong> that will try to get them to subscribe to a premium rate service or sign up for spam<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The number of users who voluntarily join fraudulent groups and send invitations to all their contacts is strikingly high.\u00a0 In the Net Security.org<\/em><\/a> article<\/a>, IBM says the informal feel of social networks is the real risk.<\/p>\n

We’re all friends here,” you’re thinking to yourself, and you’re mind chooses to ignore the things that would usually set off alarm bells in your head. Who knows – maybe it’s our inherent sense of safety that we get when surrounded by lot of people? Safety in numbers, so to speak. In any case, most of us are just less careful.<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"SPAM\"<\/p>\n

These same users then access Facebook at work<\/strong>, exposing their employers to more risks.\u00a0 The anti-malware firm Sophos<\/a> recently found that reports (PDF<\/a>) by companies of spam and malware derived from social networks<\/strong> were up 70 percent from a year earlier and concludes that “Because of this, social networks have become one of the most significant vectors for data loss and identity theft.”<\/p>\n

Due to this carelessness<\/strong>, the criminals behind the scams quickly gain large databases of contacts.\u00a0 These databases are later sold to other cybercriminals and used for sending spam or for further phishing scams.\u00a0 Some fraudulent groups explicitly invite users to install a particular application, which is even more dangerous.\u00a0 According to the article, the risk of malware infection should never be underestimated.<\/p>\n

rb-<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So the important message here is:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Keep your computer up to date<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. Use regularly updated antivirus and antispyware software<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. Verify what you are doing before you do it<\/em><\/li>\n
  4. If it is too good to be true, it probably is
    \n<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Ralph Bach<\/a>\u00a0has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his\u00a0Bach Seat<\/a> about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005.\u00a0 You can follow him on LinkedIn<\/a>,\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0 Email the Bach Seat here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The popularity and ease of use of social networks causes users to forget the risks of social networking according to security firm TrustPort<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,295],"tags":[3240,104,1096,43,4,281,2042],"class_list":["post-2025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-social-networking","tag-3240","tag-facebook","tag-fb","tag-ibm","tag-security","tag-sophos","tag-trustport"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116993,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions\/116993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}