The Dangers of Social Networking

The Dangers of Social Networking

Points discussed...

Attacking your Friends; Account Phishing ( you find yourself on a page you should not be on )

Losing your Login without being Phished

These programs inject sections of their code into your browser (mainly Internet Explorer and sometimes Firefox are targeted) in order to steal your account information before it is sent over the network.

Getting Hit in a Drive-by

Sometimes visiting a malicious website is enough to see malware unknowingly installed on a user’s computer, as sometimes vulnerabilities in your Browser allow for the arbitrary execution of code — even when Java(Script) and Flash are turned off! Once these pages are visited by someone with a vulnerable Browser, infection is inevitable if no current antivirus solution is present. However, the attacker first needs to attract visitors to such a page.

Who to entrust your Data to

Sites such as Facebook often allow third-party developers to add their own ‘Applications’ to the Social Networking Site and eventually to a users profile also. These applications often have full access to your personal data and profile information. The user is asked to consent to sharing their personal data and often can even choose which specific elements of their data they wish to share. But an application that makes use of clever social engineering techniques, just like a Trojan, can get a user to divulge virtually all of their personal data.

Hopefully forewarned is forearmed ....

As long as you have your computer protected, you shouldn't be so concerned about these points.

1. You always need to look you're logging in on www.facebook.com and not on other page (a little obvious...)
2. If there's no hacker 'chasing' you, why worrying? If you login on Facebook, as long as nobody could be tracking your password, there's nothing to worry about.
3. Don't visit any of those pages and you'll be safe (everyone knows that...)
4. Believe me that Facebook Developers don't even care about what your name is of where you're from. Of course you're not supposed to share all the private info about yourself on Facebook (such as address, ZIP code, etc.)

Every site can be considered dangerous, can't it? You could even consider Facebook Forum a dangerous site to share your information! You need to take care; that doesn't mean being crazy and altered because of the fear of being hacked, phished or whatever.

It is worth realising and bringing into awareness these risks ;many people are not aware of them and it is far better to remind people about them so that they can take appropriate precautions

Ruby wrote:It is worth realising and bringing into awareness these risks ;many people are not aware of them and it is far better to remind people about them so that they can take appropriate precautions

That's true as well, both points of view need to be taken care of: be careful, but don't stop using something because of its risks.

Thanks for the remidners, by the way

I think I need to say something here too

Although FaceBook (FB) does have some very minor security features, it also has many flaws, such as the "Instant personalization" or soemthing like that, which is set to Yes,by default which basically says everything in your profile is open to ..................see more see more see more see more
ya guessed it, your worst enemy, Microsoft!

Facebook's instant personalization pilot program helps you connect more easily with your friends on select partner sites.

You'll find a personal and social experience the moment you arrive on our select partner sites -- currently Microsoft Docs.com, Pandora, and Yelp. We're working closely with these partners in a pilot program so you can quickly connect with your friends and see relevant content on their sites. These sites personalize your experience using your public Facebook information.

When you arrive on these sites, you'll see a notification from Facebook at the top of the page.

You can easily opt-out of experiencing this on these sites by clicking "No Thanks" on the blue Facebook notification on the top of partner sites.

now in human-slag; you know of google docs? Micosoft's "docs" is their attempt at competing with google (yet again, another huge failure, and let alone the hilarious beta-time, and loading time) which you can login to via your facebook account and upload document.
Remember the good old days of true internet security?
never share your password with an external site!

Guess what this does, mmm, it does it automatically for you!

hmm food for thought yet....yet it gets better

Now, we all hate Norton Anti-Virus (Well, computer-smart people do atleast) and that's mostly because of the amount of false-positives, (that's reporting fake viruses) but now as it's been taken over by Symantic, it's started making a comeback, and that's 1 kicking comeback, but not in terms of load times, nor virus detection rate, but in keeping your private data private, well atleast the 360 Version 4 does this.
Symantic's Norton unlike most protection won't allow the automatic sharing of your password, which is great for those that are security conscious, but are willing to risk the possibility of a virus.
Basically in human slag; Facebook automatically gives ur password to these "partners" without specific authentication, and Norton prevents you from logging straight in, which is Norton's strength at this moment.

There are a few other flaws in facebook, such as their continues "upgrades" which are actually, in my opinion "downgrades" or "crapgrades" lol.

Have you ever noticed that there's no way to directly make suggestions to the facebook developers, but there is a way to report everything that's gone wrong or any feedback?
Why is this, simply because they don't care.....they don't care much for your password either.

Be smart while you can and have a long password with capitals, numbers and special characters such as the ones above your keyboard on the number (ie the !@#%$%^&*() and so forth)

And most importunately, have an up-to-date Modern browser and a up-to-date Anti-virus, which has good ratings and feedback for several sites, such as Cnet.com


That's my fair share of the 2 pennies lol