All major outlets are targeted

Mar 3, 2009 13:55 GMT  ·  By

Over the past few months, social media websites such as Facebook and MySpace have come to be under constant attack from people who spread malicious software and other tricksters. Their goal is to collect the large amount of personal data that is being circulated on these sites, and to exploit it to their own personal benefit, as well as for identity theft. Facebook is the leading target in this type of attacks, on account of the fact that its 175 million users make it the largest social media website in the world.

“There are so many people on social-networking sites, it is becoming profitable for bad guys to go there. Bad guys can see all the things you post. You may be revealing personal information that is extremely valuable,” Trend Micro global director of education David Perry warns.

The company has extensive experience in the field of software security. Perry also cautions users that crooks are very relentless and that every bit of personal information on someone's profile will be scanned, as the bad guys attempt to learn everything of use for their future thefts.

“We have a rogue application that happened this weekend. It was an application that got through security at Facebook. Kudos to Facebook for shutting it down real quick,” Jamz Yaneza, the research manager at Trend Micro, said on Monday. He added that the software was very similar to another piece of malicious program that had been unleashed by another Facebook user the week before.

These software are very damaging, as they send out false messages, such as “Facebook is closing,” and then ask the users to install a small application on their personal computers. This program then steals all sort of personal data directly from the computer, helping with identity theft.

Not only online attacks are planned on these sites. If perpetrators see opulence in the pictures of certain users and find the address on their profiles, then they have no problem in going to a certain city and robbing the house. Therefore, it's of vital importance to never share such information on this type of websites, and to never post your pictures in situations that would make even the rich want to be there.