A Brief Discussion of Current Information Security Threats on Facebook
A brief discussion of current information security threats on Facebook
As Internet changed our ways of living, Social Network applications such as Facebook changed our ways of interacting with others. According to a report written by Emil Protalinski this year, Facebook users spent more than 10.5 billion minutes per day on Facebook during January 2012, excluding mobile devices. This comes out to 12 minutes and 26 seconds per user. With so much time consumed, Facebook users definitely created tons of information concerning all the aspects of our lives.
To begin with, let’s see what kind of information Facebook has. Facebook consists of four parts, which are personal page, friends, groups and apps. Personal page includes people’s daily activities, profiles, photos and events. Friends include news, messages and events from their friends. Groups provide people a place to discuss, communicate and share their thoughts. Facebook also contains millions of third-party apps to help people entertain and work. Each part of Facebook contains immeasurable information. Most of the information on Facebook is visible to the outside world for the purpose of sharing and exchanging information.
While Facebook users share a wide range of information, a lot of people show their concerns about user privacy. Kathy Kristof (2011) stated that users make Facebook so treacherous. Further she explained that the crooks can get the name, age, birthday, address and other basic information of end-users directly from their website and such information increases the chances of cracking bank accounts of users and other important accounts. Another concern posted by SOPHOS (2011) demonstrates many different methods of Facebook scams such as Self-XSS, click jacking and survey scams. All of these ways are trying to trick users into cutting and pasting a malicious JavaScript code into their browser’s address bar. In addition, Linda McGlasson (2011) listed top 9 security threats in which Social
As Internet changed our ways of living, Social Network applications such as Facebook changed our ways of interacting with others. According to a report written by Emil Protalinski this year, Facebook users spent more than 10.5 billion minutes per day on Facebook during January 2012, excluding mobile devices. This comes out to 12 minutes and 26 seconds per user. With so much time consumed, Facebook users definitely created tons of information concerning all the aspects of our lives.
To begin with, let’s see what kind of information Facebook has. Facebook consists of four parts, which are personal page, friends, groups and apps. Personal page includes people’s daily activities, profiles, photos and events. Friends include news, messages and events from their friends. Groups provide people a place to discuss, communicate and share their thoughts. Facebook also contains millions of third-party apps to help people entertain and work. Each part of Facebook contains immeasurable information. Most of the information on Facebook is visible to the outside world for the purpose of sharing and exchanging information.
While Facebook users share a wide range of information, a lot of people show their concerns about user privacy. Kathy Kristof (2011) stated that users make Facebook so treacherous. Further she explained that the crooks can get the name, age, birthday, address and other basic information of end-users directly from their website and such information increases the chances of cracking bank accounts of users and other important accounts. Another concern posted by SOPHOS (2011) demonstrates many different methods of Facebook scams such as Self-XSS, click jacking and survey scams. All of these ways are trying to trick users into cutting and pasting a malicious JavaScript code into their browser’s address bar. In addition, Linda McGlasson (2011) listed top 9 security threats in which Social