Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter Leave Themselves -- And Their Wallets -- Open To Attack


Recommended Posts

Study: Social Network Users Put Their Data At Risk

Users of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter leave themselves -- and their wallets -- open to attack

Jun 27, 2009 | 12:48 AM

By Tim Wilson

DarkReading

"Members of online social networks may be more vulnerable to financial loss, identity theft, and malware infection than they realize, according to a survey released earlier this week.

In a survey of more than 1,100 members of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, and other popular social networks, security vendor Webroot says it has uncovered numerous behaviors that put social networkers' identities -- and wallets -- at risk.

Two-thirds of respondents don't restrict any details of their personal profile from being visible through a public search engine such as Google, the survey says. More than half aren't sure who can see their profile. About one third include at least three pieces of personally identifiable information.

More than one third use the same password across multiple sites and a fourth of respondents accept "friend requests" from strangers, the study states.

"Three in ten people we polled experienced a security attack through a social network in the past year, including identity theft, malware infection, spam, unauthorized password changes and 'friend in distress' money-stealing scams," said Mike Kronenberg, CTO of Webroot's consumer business. "

Details of the survey can be found here. - http://www.webroot.com/En_US/about-press-r...s-revealed.html

details ... darkdreading - http://www.darkreading.com/securityservice...Section=Privacy

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...