Facebook users warned of phishing dangers

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Aug 14, 2007

41% happy to hand out personal data to strangers.

Research carried out by Sophos has found that 41% of users of hugely popular social networking site Facebook risk revealing sensitive personal information to total strangers.

The study involved creating a user on the site under the name 'Freddi Staur' (an anagram of 'ID fraudster') and contacting 200 randomly selected members of Facebook's 35-million-strong online community with a 'friend request', to which 87 users responded, many of them revealing email addresses, dates of birth, employment information, home addresses and even phone numbers. Several provided complete resumes, while one even revealed his mother's maiden name. The data thus gained could be invaluable to phishers, identity thieves and other fraudsters.

Sophos suggests that too many Facebook users fail to make use of the security features available, leaving the fairly open default settings unchanged - a Facebook spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal (in an article available to WSJ subscribers here) that only 20% of users change the settings from the defaults. Facebook also insists that it monitors its users' activities and regularly shuts down accounts which appear to be abusing the system to gather potentially sensitive data, including it seems the fake 'Freddi Staur' user.

Details of the study from Sophos are here, and a guide to securing Facebook accounts is also provided, here.

Posted on 14 August 2007 by Virus Bulletin

twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

VB2021 localhost videos available on YouTube

VB has made all VB2021 localhost presentations available on the VB YouTube channel, so you can now watch - and share - any part of the conference freely and without registration.

VB2021 localhost is over, but the content is still available to view!

VB2021 localhost - VB's second virtual conference - took place last week, but you can still watch all the presentations.

VB2021 localhost call for last-minute papers

The call for last-minute papers for VB2021 localhost is now open. Submit before 20 August to have your paper considered for one of the slots reserved for 'hot' research!

New article: Run your malicious VBA macros anywhere!

Kurt Natvig explains how he recompiled malicious VBA macro code to valid harmless Python 3.x code.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.