14 DAY TRIAL // Bitdefender representatives share their insight on the new security and privacy related features from the redesigned form of Facebook.
If we look at the changes from a visual point of view it all might just look great, but what if we look at the security issues raised by the changes? How will they affect our virtual well-being?
The first problem revolves around Smart Lists. It seems as while this is a great sharing tool, it also increases the risk of high-level targeted attacks.
“High level attackers find out exactly who is working for a specific company, what job she/he has there and even more; on what particular project are they working. And we are talking about 800 million users,” revealed Catalin Cosoi, head of Online Threats Lab.
The Subscribers feature is expected to attract a larger number of spambots. While spambots were specific for Twitter up until now, Facebook will probably also get its share from now on.
The Timeline is great for sharing personal experiences, but this sort of information can easily be used by those who might want to harm us.
“The Timeline is a revolution in usability but it's also the open story of our life. If a user doesn't change the default settings for who can see the wall, this story will be available to anyone: friends, photos, places where you've checked in, relations and much more. It was available before, but not so easy to use,” Cosoi further revealed.
Another concerning thing is that the member's health status is made public by default. It might be considered a fun thing to know, but something like this can pose a real threat on a person in certain circumstances.
Finally, the widgets contained in the Timeline will be easily replicated by scammers.
“Considering the short lifetime of spammy apps, this could boost the efficiency of a scammy app. Of course, this feature is brand new, so it will probably take a while for scammers exploit it but every successful viral feature has been exploited by social media scammers.”
The privacy settings made recently haven't done too much to improve the customer's security and after making these major modifications to the general functionality of the social network, Facebook is expected to bring further improvements that focus mainly on the protection of their members.