ScienceDaily (Oct. 18, 2010) — Social network sites such as Facebook, mySpace or Twitter are gaining popularity. But the 'Web 2.0' presents new dangers. At the Vienna University of Technology (VUT), security hazards of social network sites have been detected and studied. Researchers of the VUT now provide advice on how to increase your safety on the Web.
Are you tired of "see who is visiting you profile" wall post or "see rotating wall" type of applications that never actually work but are posted by your best friends on your wall every now and then . You might also have tried these applications many times to see who the hell is trying to spy on your profile but all u get is dissapointed . Many of the girls added in my profile "hit me with a pillow" or send me a basket of "red roses" but it always keeps me wondering what its all is. While I’d love to write an article about “How To Block The Pillow Fight Application”, the only thing you can block the application from doing currently is accessing your personal information when your friends use the app.
Socializing and finding new friends on social network sites has become just as common as writing emails. However, new security risks of these new websites are becoming more common. Gilbert Wondracek and Christian Platzer, of the Secure Systems Lab at VUT, have been doing research on these security issues. With a few simple tricks, they managed to match more than 1.2 million social network profiles with the corresponding private email addresses. This experiment was done for scientific purposes only -- but what if the next attack is launched by malicious hackers?
Security company BitDefender has said today that 20 percent of posts that Facebook users see on their "news feed" are actually malware.
60 percent of those attacks come from third-party apps.
22 percent of the malware apps say they will help you see who has been viewing your profile, 15 percent offer "extras" for games you might have like FarmVille, 11 percent offer a "dislike" button (it doesn't exist) and another 7 percent offer links to games.
BitDefender collected its data through the SafeGo Facebook app, which scans user's accounts for malware. SafeGo was launched last month and has 14,000 users.
So far, the software has scanned 17 million posts.
Websense's security tool Defensio says that 1 in every 10 updates that have a link lead to malware.
22 percent of the malware apps say they will help you see who has been viewing your profile, 15 percent offer "extras" for games you might have like FarmVille, 11 percent offer a "dislike" button (it doesn't exist) and another 7 percent offer links to games.
BitDefender collected its data through the SafeGo Facebook app, which scans user's accounts for malware. SafeGo was launched last month and has 14,000 users.
So far, the software has scanned 17 million posts.
Websense's security tool Defensio says that 1 in every 10 updates that have a link lead to malware.
Someone who creates a profile on a social-network site wants to get into contact with as many friends as possible. Most websites offer a very simple and convenient way to find new contacts: users can simply upload their email address book and they get a list of existing profiles matching the email addresses. "This gives cause for concern". Even if my email address is supposed to be kept secret and it is not visible in my profile, Facebook still uses it to identity my profile. Thats where Facebook is DIRTY"
When Facebook created the new stream API, they failed to include anything for blocking others from posting application stories to your wall. While you can block your friends from posting on your wall via Facebook’s privacy settings, there’s no way to differentiate between the types of wall posts that you’d like to prevent users from posting. The end result is a wall filled with JUNK.
Applications have been using various methods for posting to users’ walls including forcing users to grant the application extended permissions (which is against the Platform terms of service). After first writing about thePillow Fight application last month, the volume of notifications has only increased. I would have thought that Facebook would add a link for “block all stories from [Application Name]” to the bottom of all application wall posts.
This method has resulted in a number of applications gaining tons of traction that they probably don’t deserve. Pillow Fights put the platform back almost three years when the classic “Snowball Fights”, “Throw Poop”, and “Water Fight” applications were popular. Those types of applications were part of the reason many viral channels became restricted. Ultimately a small number of developers began abusing the viral channels as is the case now.
Facebook should do something to resolve this as soon as possible because it’s really degrading the overall site experience. Don’t take my word for it though, check out all the status updates below from people when searching for the term “Pillow Fight”.
Posted in: Security,TipsnTricks
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