Facebook & Twitter Tips

October 23, 2009 by DrDaveHale
Filed under Blog, Podcast, Social marketing, Twitter, Uncategorized

Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are quickly becoming a large part of online culture, which also opens up new potential security threats. This newsletter will highlight a few of the key security and privacy risks of these sites and provide ways to protect yourself online.

The premise of these sites is to share information and build communities. This is great for connecting with old & new friends, but all of this sharing also provides easy access for hackers who focus on social engineering and phishing attacks. While you are using these sites, make sure you are aware of who you are providing information to and always ask yourself ‘why’ when personal information is being requested from you.

Some of the most popular methods used by hackers are:

1. Hijacking a user’s account and sending spam to their friends (connections) that leads them all to a phishing site which will collect private information to be used for identity theft.

2. Creating fake applications on the site that include malware or rogue anti-virus software.

3. Using malware to gain access to users’ personal information on their profiles.

“What are you doing?” Be careful what you post

Twitter and Facebook both encourage you to update ‘What you are doing” or “What’s on your mind” at any moment of the day. But be careful what you write as a Twitter Tweet or a Facebook Status Update. Twitter does not require you to ‘accept’ anyone who wants to follow you, and on Facebook although someone is not part of your network, if one of your Facebook friends comments on your status update, whoever is in their network can click on the link through a common friend and see your post. There have been reports recently of increased home robbery because people have posted that they are going on vacation or traveling on business - this is basically the same as saying ‘No one will be home for the next 5 days - Come on in!’

Control Your Privacy

Facebook does offer privacy controls that restrict or deny access to information; however, since Facebook is a social networking site designed to share information many of the settings are open by default. It is up to you to access the Privacy Setting and configure the options. For each setting, you can choose to share information with Everyone, My Networks & Friends, Friends of Friends, or only Friends. We recommend you ensure you have set the level of privacy you desire.

What’s Up With The Tiny URL?

Another recent security threat surfacing on social media sites is the tiny URL attack. The tiny URL became popular when trying to link to a long URL did not work on posts, blogs, or the 140 character limit Tweet. Because the tiny URL is a random collection of characters that has nothing to do with the actual URL, hackers quickly discovered they could exploit a tiny URL by sending unsuspecting users to malicious websites that access their personal information.

Spyware on FaceBook (Shudder!)

One of the most recent disturbances on Facebook was when hackers started creating automated Facebook pages and used them to spread spyware to unsuspecting users. The fake Facebook profiles featured pictures of the same woman but the profiles had different names. Each page had a link to a supposed video that would infect users’ computers with spyware if clicked. It is believed that there are many such fake Facebook profiles alive today and that hackers figured out how to bypass the CAPTCHA system that requires users to retype a series of letters to activate your account. This system was initially designed so that computers could not create new accounts, only humans.

The bottom line is: be aware of who you are providing information to online, never provide personal information to anyone you do not know, if you are suspicious or not sure of a URL link - DON’T CLICK, and think twice before posting any specific details of your whereabouts on social media sites.

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