Social Malice: One In 60 Facebook Posts Are Malicious

http://ow.ly/7dkYF

An article by Kelly Jackson Higgins, Dark Reading, appearing also on the informationweek.com website.

This article discusses the nature of social media networks, and the fact that many posts are malicious and possibly contain forms of computer virus, or are attempts to hack user's accounts.

The article states, "Here's what social networking looks like on the dark side: one in 100 tweets today are malicious, and one in 60 Facebook posts are as well.

Facebook users are the least confident in social network security, with 40% confessing they feel unsafe on Facebook, while 28% feel that way about Twitter, and 14% on LinkedIn."

The article further states, "According to new Barracuda survey data of social media users, LinkedIn is the least-blocked social network by enterprises, with only 20% of organizations preventing their employees from using LinkedIn from work. That's in contrast to Twitter (25%); Google+ (24%); and Facebook (31%)."

 

In addition, the another interesting note on the article is, "...most users say the important factors to consider when joining a social network are security (92%), that their friends use it (91%), privacy (90%), and ease of use (87%). More than 90% have received spam over a social network, and more than half have experienced phishing attacks. More than 20% have received malware, 16.6% have had their account used for spamming, and about 13% have had their account hijacked or their password stolen. More than half are unhappy with Facebook's privacy controls.

Meanwhile, Barracuda counted 43% of Twitter accounts as "true users" with real followers and regular tweets, and 57% as "not true users"--either spam bots or inactive accounts"