I have written before and warned my customers as well as friends to be careful where you click. I would like to believe I've been pretty helpful but I also feel I should let everyone know about more.
Many of us are getting on social networks, a big one that many of my friends are on is facebook (one friend of mine joked that he was trying to find everyone on assbook before he realized where we were, we looked it up and it's a real site). Facebook (FB) is a great place to connect with friends. It is a safe contained environment in which you interact primarily with friends you have in the real world, maybe a few extras. So your friends wouldn't do anything to harm you would they?
Well back in the days of cool viruses such as *Melissa* and *I Love You* your friends would send you an email with the virus attached. They didn't mean to but that's how viruses are. Now we have junk folders and Microsoft is basically blocking all attachments by default. If you get in and make the changes to allow attachments then the message is clear, "it's your fault if you get hosed".
Well, a few days ago I had my facebook page open and it has this cool Chat feature. One of my friends sent me a chat, curiously as soon as she did the little circle by her name was red indicating she was offline. The chat claimed she had gone to a website, filled out info and received a free iPhone--- I could also the link was right there. I didn't click because I'm always suspicious, I also wasn't curious to find out what it was. A few months back another friend was posting things on people's wall saying something about somebody having a crush on them, I think it was that it's been a while.
The point here is that people have figured out a way to use your facebook account to do things as you. According to what I read on the facebook security page it appears this most likely happens as a result of phishing. Phishing is a method of tricking you into giving up information about yourself such as your account name and password. They do this to get into your bank account but also to do damage to your computer. To become a victim of phishing you probably have to also click on something so always, always... ALWAYS be careful where you click. Be careful of opening email attachments, and be careful of hyperlinks. Make sure they go where they say they go (you can usually rest the mouse on the link and the real link will display). Sometimes I don't even believe that so I have to check a lot of things first. Often I still won't click on the link, there are a lot of things that aren't critical and those I just ignore. If I think it is something I may need to see I may go to the site on my own not by clicking on the link.
So it's bad when you can't even trust your FB friends, but that's all part of being safe. I have provided a link to some info about facebook security items and information. Click it if you dare!
No comments:
Post a Comment