The increasing popularity of social networking sites has not come without consequences. Indeed, several users fall victim to social networking scams on a daily basis thus making it important to be more conscious and careful when browsing on these sites.The following are some of the most popular scams developed by social network hackers to swindle users.
Fake Applications
Facebook and other social networking sites are regularly targeted by malicious program developers. Apps such as quizzes, surveys and scrabble games, developed by third-party programmers, are sometimes used as opportunities to send viruses to users as seen int he recent Facebook viral Dislike button app.
Solution: Either avoid downloading and using third-party applications or change your privacy settings to control which apps have access to your private information.
Phishing E-mails
Phishing is a term that refers to the act of sending emails that falsely claims to be from a legitimate source. For example, email messages that claim to be from Facebook and contains a login link that is designed to steal personal details and hijack accounts of unsuspecting users.
Solution: Enter Website addresses manually so as to be sure the site is genuine.
Spam Messages
I was surprised to find my Facebook inbox bombarded with more spam messages than I ever had in my Hotmail inbox. There are several forms of email scams and unfortunately social networking sites’ mailboxes are not exempt from all of these.
Solution: Ignore unsolicited messages and if the sender is known to you, always confirm just in case their account has been hacked.
Fake Links
Some scammers randomly send Friend invitations to random users so as to post links that lead to malicious Websites on their profile pages or via instant messaging. Most of these links are usually very enticing.
Solution: Use your common sense, never click on links your are not sure of.
Talking Point
Do you know of any other social networking scams and solutions?
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Computers Smart Phones Technology
October 16, 2010 at 8:36 am
I think I have hear about Trojan.Twebot and Twitter accounts with celebrity names, both on Twitter. Scams is on increase in social networking and micro-blogging, user should be careful about apps.