Search:

Home | Social Health


Social Networking Can Be Hazardous to Your Health!!!

By: Ted Hastings

Social networking sites, MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, and have climbed in popularity recently. They allow users to keep in contact with their friends and meet new ones, but they can also expose them to viruses, spyware and other online dangers. As the use of Web 2.0 applications, like wikis, blogs and social networking sites increases, they attract the attention of cyber criminals. Many of the people who use these sites are relatively new to the Internet and they can lack experience in dealing with online threats.

Many of the threats discussed in this article are historical. They have now been countered by site owners, but new ones will appear as attackers develop their methods in response to improved security. Social networking sites can spread threats very quickly, due to their interactive nature. This makes them very attractive as targets. Many threats take advantage of the fact that people trust their friends, and fail to realize how important it is to treat electronic communications with care, irrespective of their apparent source.

As with other aspects of Internet use, threats can be split into two categories: behavior-based and technology-based.

Threats Posed by Behavior

Behaviour-based threats arise largely because users are careless regarding the personal information they share online. This can leave them vulnerable to phishing attacks and identity theft. Users often publish details of their friends, their likes and dislikes, hobbies and jobs, without realizing that this information can be invaluable to identity thieves as it can help them appear more credible.

Research carried out by IT security company Sophos on a random sample of Facebook users showed that 41% were prepared to divulge personal information like email address, date of birth and phone number to a complete stranger. The research involved creating a fictitious Facebook profile for a green plastic frog named Freddi and sending out 200 friend requests to randomly-chosen users throughout the world. 87 of the users contacted responded and 82 of them supplied personal information, including email addressed, date of birth, details about their education or workplace, address and phone number, as well as photos of friends and family and information about spouses, likes and dislikes and hobbies.

Research carried out in 2007 by Internet Safety website Get Safe Online, showed that one in four UK social networking users had posted confidential personal information, such as their phone number or address on their profiles. 13% of users had posted information or photos of other people online without their consent. This figure rose to an alarming 27% among 18-24 year-olds.

Phishing isn't the only threat to be found on social networking websites. Eleven students at a high school near Toronto were suspended for posting comments about their principal on Facebook after the school imposed a ban on electronic devices and implemented a uniform policy. A school spokesman described the comments as vulgar and profane and claimed that they amounted to amounted to cyber-bullying.

There have been several allegations that young girls have been raped by older men who encountered them via MySpace or Facebook, but none of these appear to have been conclusively proved. The real issue appears to be that social networking sites can provide an opportunity for men to meet young girls in an unsupervised environment, a situation that parents ought to be very wary of.

Technology-Based

Social networking sites can also be a source of technology-based threats. They allow millions of users to post content, so it's fairly inevitable that some of these will be malicious persons attempting to post viruses or spyware.

Early in 2008, more than three million Facebook users were infected with spyware in less than four days. A Facebook widget named "Secret Crush" or "My Admirer", reportedly downloaded by one and a half million users, claimed to tell users who had a secret crush on them, but actually tricked them into downloading the well-known Zango spyware. It spread by prompting users to forward the widget to five friends.

Anti-virus vendor Symantec has claimed that vulnerabilities which could be used by hackers to take control of Windows PCs have been found in ActiveX controls offered to users for uploading images to their pages by both Facebook and MySpace. The insecure controls are based on an ActiveX control named Image Uploader, produced by Aurigma Inc.

Towards the end of 2005, 19-year old Samy Kamkar wrote a worm that infected more than a million MYSpace users and caused the site to shut down. The Samy worm added a million friends to his profile within a few hours, adding the string "but most of all, Samy is my hero" to each of their profiles. Kamkar was later sentenced to three years probation and made to perform 90 days of community service.

In January 2008 the biggest privacy breach to date on a social networking site occurred when a 17-gigabyte file containing more than half a million pictures lifted from private MySpace profiles showed up on BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service. A security flaw, first reported in Autumn 200, gave hackers access to the photo galleries of some MySpace users who had set their profiles to private, the default setting for users under 16 years of age. This allowed pedophiles and voyeurs who used it to target 14- and 15-year-old users.

Brazilian users of Google's Orkut application were attacked in December 2007 by a worm that attempted to take control of their computers and steal their bank account details. It spread via booby-trapped links placed on the personal page of Orkut users and infected users when they viewed messages that came from friends who had already been exposed.

This loophole was closed quickly, but another worm, called Scrapkut, appeared on Orkut early in 2008. It seemed harmless at first, but it was soon discovered that it could intercept login sessions at several Brazilian banking Web sites and replace components with a fake authentication prompt which could capture the users' logon credentials.

YouTube has also been used indirectly to infect sites with malware. Many Internet users have received spam messages asking them to click on an attached YouTube video clip. The link actually takes them to a fake YouTube sight where they are told that they must install Adobe Flash Player to play the video. Clicking the supplied download link causes a file called install_flash_player.exe. This is the same name as the real Flash installer, but it actually installs a Trojan known as Trojan-Dropper.W32/Agent.

How Can You Protect Yourself?

We've looked at some of the dangers that you can encounter on social networking sites, but what can you do to protect yourself against them? Technology-based attacks can be generally be prevented by the usual software defenses. Anti-virus software will protect you against viruses, Trojans and worms and anti-spyware programs will protect you against spyware and adware. A good-quality firewall (remember that the one supplied with Windows XP is very basic) will protect you against hackers and Internet safety suites will protect you against a variety of threats.

Behavior-based attacks, which rely on tricking users into behaving unwisely, are harder to deal with as they can only be tackled by a change in user behavior. Get Safe Online provides a number of guidelines for networking safely, including the following:

Don't let peer pressure push you into doing something you're not comfortable with.

Avoid posting information that can identify you, such as telephone or mobile numbers, photos of your home, workplace or school, your address, date of birth or full name.

Choose a user name that doesn't include any personal information.

Set up a throwaway email account (eg: Hotmail or Yahoo) that doesn't resemble your real name and use that to register and receive mail from the site.

Use a strong password with at least eight characters.

Don't make comments or post pictures that could prove embarrassing later.

Use the site's privacy features to restrict access to your profile.

Watch out for phishing scams.

If you make sure that your software defenses are strong and up-to-date and you follow the above guidelines you should be able to enjoy social networking without problems.

If you have young children you should ensure that they are not allowed access to the Internet in an unsupervised environment. It's much better if the computer is in a family area, such as a lounge or dining room, rather than hidden away in a bedroom. Even with older children you should try to keep an eye on their Facebook or MySpace profiles and watch out for any changes in behavior which may suggest that they are encountering online problems.

Article Source: http://www.HealthArticleBank.com

Ted Hastings has over 35 years experience of IT and education. He has written a textbook on Internet Safety Skills and writes a regular blog entitled Surf Safely.

 

Please Rate this Article

 

Not yet Rated

Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Social Health Articles Via RSS!
Additional Articles From - Home | Social Health
.: Welcome :.

Already Registered ?
Please Login

New here ?
Sign Up for a FREE account or learn about the BENEFITS.
:: For Authors ::

Submission Guidelines
Submit Articles

:: For Publishers ::

Top Authors
Most Popular Articles
Ezine Notifications
Article RSS Feeds

:: For Everyone ::

About Us
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service
Link to Us
Exchange Links with Us

Staff Only
Vitamins Please Visit Sponsors
Healthy Relationships
Largest STD Dating Site - the largest dating service for singles with HIV/AIDS, herpes, and other STDs. Meet hundreds of thousands of STD singles.

HealthArticleBank.com - Deposits & Withdrawals - Interest in Health
Free Health Articles - Website Content - Blog Content - Ezine Articles - Article Directory - Submit Your Article

Powered by Article Dashboard