Facebook Security and Privacy – Five (5) Unseen Risks Of Facebook

• Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable

• Scammers are creating fake profiles

Facebook Security: Is Facebook a secure platform to communicate with your friends?

Here’s the thing: Facebook is one of the world’s most popular websites. Security gaps are frequently identified. It’s not as naturally secure as individuals believe it is when they log in every day.

There are, definitely, growing pains. Facebook is known as a young business and has been around for a couple of years now. This is all being worked out. They are so young that they are still trying to find out how to make cash. They don’t even have a blueprint for sales yet. Comparing this with others is difficult; we have never seen this phenomenon before how people communicate with each other – only e-mail comes near.

The potential is real for violence. Victims of Cyber-related offenses lost $559 million in 2009, according to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. That was up 110 percent from the year before. If you’re not careful with Facebook, you’re looking at the potential for identity theft, or maybe even anything like an attack if you exchange details with a dangerous person you believe is a “friend.” One British police department recently recorded a 346 percent rise in the number of incidents they’ve responded to in the past year involving Facebook. There are genuine threats.

Lately, without any new news about a Facebook-related security problem, a week doesn’t seem to go by.

A publication named “TechCrunch” found a security hole earlier this week that made it possible for users to read their friends’ private chats. Since then, Facebook has patched it, but who knows how long the defect has existed? Some speculate that for years it may have been that way.

A hacker was selling Facebook user names and passwords in an underground hacker market last month, researchers at VeriSign’s iDefense community discovered. It was estimated that he had approximately 1.5 million accounts and sold them for between $25 and $45.

And the web is frequently targeted by hackers seeking to spam or harvest their data or run other scams on these 400 million users. There is a lot of criticism of Facebook’s handling of safety in the security community. The most disappointing thing, perhaps, is that the firm seldom responds to inquiries.

Facebook Security and Privacy: Do people have privacy on Facebook?

Oh, no. There are all sorts of ways to obtain information about you from third parties. For example, you may not realize that each time you do that, when you play popular games on Facebook, such as Farmville, or take those popular quizzes, you allow an application to be downloaded to your profile that you may not know third parties details.

Does Facebook share info about users with third parties through things such as Open Graph?

For them, Open Graph is a new idea – they introduced it at a conference last week. In reality, it is simply a way to share the data in your profile with all sorts of third parties, such as partner websites, so that they can have a better understanding of your preferences and what you are discussing, so that they can “make it a more personal experience.” as they present it.

The theory behind Open Graph – even if they have not implemented it – is their whole business model.

Yeah, that’s the business model – they are trying to get you to share as much data as possible so that they can monetize it by sharing it with advertisers.

Isn’t it in Facebook’s best interest to get you to share as much info as possible?

Completely it is. The goal of Facebook is to get you to share as much data as possible so that they can share it with advertisers. If it looks now, the more details you share, the more advertisers you will share with them and make more money.

It is not only sharing the information: Isn’t there a security problem every time they redesign the site?

Any time the site is updated by Facebook, which occurs at least a few times a year, it restores your privacy settings to a default in which all of your data is effectively made public. Checking the privacy settings and choosing what you want to share and what you do not like to share is up to you, the user.

Facebook does not inform you of any updates, and your privacy settings are reset to a public default. Many times, through friends, you can find out. Facebook doesn’t warn you about these changes; it just lets you know that the website has been updated.

Can your real friends on Facebook also can make you vulnerable?

Completely. Absolutely! Your protection is just as strong as the security of your mate. For example, if someone has a poor password in your network of friends and his or her profile is compromised, he or she can now give you malware. There is a popular scam called a 419 fraud, in which someone hacks your profile and sends messages asking for money to your friends – pretending to be you – saying, “Hey, I was in London, I was mugged, please wire me money.” People are falling for it. People assume they need support from their good friend – and end up wiring money to Nigeria.

Many websites we use display banner ads, but do we have to be wary of them on Facebook?

Absolutely: Facebook could not screen any of its commercials. It has not done a fantastic job of vetting which commercials are secure and which are not. As a consequence, you may get an ad in your profile that has malicious code in it that you are surfing around one day. Last month, a malware ad asked individuals to download antivirus software that was a virus.

Is too big a network of friends dangerous?

Do you know people on Facebook with a lot of followers, 500 or 1000 friends? What is the probability that they are all real? Last year, there was a report concluding that 40 percent of all Facebook accounts are false. Bots or impostors have set them up. If you have 500 mates, there’s probably a percentage of people you don’t meet, and you’re sharing a lot of details with them, including your children’s photos, their names, while you’re on holiday. Do you want to bring this knowledge out there to people you don’t even know?