Facebook joins PayPal, eBay as popular phishing target

This pie chart shows that more than half of phishing attacks masquerade as PayPal links, followed by eBay, HSBC, and Facebook, according to a new report from Kaspersky Lab.

(Credit: Kaspersky Lab)

Facebook has joined the ranks of the most popular sites targeted by phishers, according to a study released Wednesday by Kaspersky Lab.

Facebook's share of the phishing attacks that occurred from January through March this year was 5.7 percent, while more than 52 percent were masquerading as PayPal, 13.3 percent targeted eBay users, and 7.8 percent were fake HSBC messages. The rest of the top 10 listed in

the report were Google, the Internal Revenue Service, Web-hosting site RapidShare, Bank of America, UBI credit union, and Brazilian bank Bradesco, followed by a category called "other."

"Facebook popped up unexpectedly in fourth place," the report said. "This was the first time since we started monitoring that attacks on a social-networking site have been so prolific."

Just last week, Facebook board member Jim Breyer, of venture capital firm Accel Partners, found that his Facebook account was spamming his contacts because of a phishing scam.

The report also found that spam represents about 85 percent of all e-mail traffic and that Asia remains the leading source of spam by geographical region, while the individual countries serving as the top sources are the U.S., India, and Russia.

Facebook security flaw revealed

London, May 6 (IANS) Social networking site Facebook temporarily disabled its chat system after a serious security flaw was revealed which allowed people to view chats and pending friend requests of their Facebook friends.

The security flaw, discovered Wednesday by technology website TechCrunch, related to a feature on Facebook that allows users to preview their own privacy settings, telegraph.co.uk reported.

'There is a major security flaw in the site that, with just a few mouse clicks, enables any user to view the live chats of their 'friends'. Using what sounds like a simple trick, a user can also access their friends' latest pending friend-requests and which friends they share in common. That's a lot of potentially sensitive information,' the report quoted TechCrunch's Steve O'Hear as saying.

In a statement, Facebook said: 'For a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users' chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends. Our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function. We also pushed out a fix. Chat will be turned back on across the site shortly.'

The report said recent changes to the way Facebook shares its users information with other users and third parties have drawn criticism from privacy watchdogs and US senators.

Five hidden dangers of Facebooking

Washington, May 10 (ANI): An expert in online privacy has drawn attention to the five dangers of sharing information on social networking site Facebook.

Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online, claims marketing efforts by the company often results in a compromise on account holders' privacy, reports CBS News.

Goodchild noted five risks of using Facebook on 'The Early Show on Saturday Morning.' They are:

1.Your information is being shared with third parties

2. Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign

3. Facebook ads may contain malware

4. Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable

5. Scammers are creating fake profiles

Earlier this week, 15 privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the site manipulates privacy settings to make users' personal information available for commercial use. (ANI)

Using Social Media to Grow Your Business

The generally used social networking sites are either used for bragging, or stacking ex-boy friends, few of them are also used for business purposes; usually click-through that doesn’t really excites me. But, I have recently come across a totally different concept of networking -twitter. It helps me connect with many experts and entrepreneurs, and makes me wish to be on the brink of social media.

Few tips have been put together to become a social media expert using TWITTER:

be a part of twitter ASAP:

TWITTER is a social networking media tool where you can not state more than 140 characters. This service has increased my clicks up to 800 unique clicks per day. Today many popular brands are using TWITTER to spread their business across.

Networking with new PR professionals and brands helps you to grow your business and spread it across the globe. I myself follow at least 100 new “TWEEPS” daily, it guarantees more followers, more the followers, more your business will spread. The main benefit using TWITTER is that you put a voice behind a brand and making it come alive a bit more, it makes people more familiar and comfortable with you.

GOOGLE FEEDS ARE IMPORTANT

Getting proper Google feeds is the most important thing for your business; you should allow feeds for most likely words that may find your site. You should also keep a check on Google feeds of your competitor’s sites to check how they are leveraging social media tools for their business.

Try and reach out for the other columnist dealing with the same job, keep tracks of interesting bloggers, read new trips and tricks. There are many bloggers who constantly write how to enhance your business using social media tools. You can also try other networking media tools and remain subsidize to their feedbacks. Play around with your feeds and you’ll find other social media experts who appeals to your interests.

BE TRENDY

You should always keep yourself up to date, subscribe to sites like RSS feeds to be aware of what’s new and popular and be well rounded in tech knowledge.

Time management

Time management is the most important factor responsible for business growth, only learning new trends or checking mails and messages repeatedly wont help. You should cleverly manage time between communicating with your tweeps, reading your messages, update, check Google feeds or read articles, make notes wherever possible, and avoid repeating same things. Besides you should also communicate with your TWITTERS daily on TWITTER to let them grow familiar with you. Try printing out the articles and reading them later, like while shopping or a haircut.

exploration helps

You should not limit your exploration to TWITTER or few other related sites, check for social networks that are popular at different places or countries, follow the international users, students and researchers. Networking with businessmen and professionals helps a lot to increase your business.

Market with Facebook

Facebook features among popular social networking sites that allow like-minded individuals to form groups and interact with each other. The mounting number of social media users has prompted business owners to optimize their business potential by using Facebook as their prominent marketing tool. You can successfully utilize Facebook services to market by,

• Signing up with the site and getting an account. After setting up the profile, you must customize your account appropriately to make it attractive to the visitors.
• Post the links to your company blog that has informative and exciting articles.
• Add friends to your network and widen your network.
• Build a strong relationship with your group through frequent interactions and partake in discussion boards and forums related to your field.

Add games and videos to your account and also include applications/buttons in your blog that allow people in your group to share it with others. This will work like word to mouth publicity.

Manage social media effectively!

Being an inexpensive marketing strategy, social media marketing has become the prominent strategy of internet marketers and business entrepreneurs, today. You can promote your brand/products/services through social media, effectively and interact with your prospective customers, too. Availing social networking management services of the experts in the industry can be your first step towards optimizing your visibility, popularity and hence, your profitability.

Social networking management experts can help you with their in-depth expertise, in using social media to your advantage. They assist you in setting up and customizing the account in popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and YouTube. They support you with your advertising and promotional campaigns on social media and in increasing the viral traffic to your company site. Updating contents, increasing your presence in social media and social media optimization are done adeptly by social media management services. Under their apt guidance, you can convert a large percentage of visitors to your site into your customers/clients/associates, successfully.

Interact with prospective customers through social media

Social media has revolucan i tionized every facet of internet marketing, today with its infinite potential and cost effectiveness. More and more companies and business endeavors are focusing towards finding affordable social media marketing services and social media optimization services that can get them the necessary viral traffic and sales.

Social media optimization and marketing relies heavily on the magnitude of the network of prospective customers, associates or friends you have created in social media. After identifying your target group, you must interact with them through posts, forums and discussions. You can discuss on your brand, product and services and even answer your customers’ queries through the forums.

You can prove your expertise in the field by posting the links to your blogs that are packed with informative and interesting content for your customers. Customize your blog with widgets and buttons that allow them to share it instantly with others. This will boost your popularity and brand image among your loyal customer base.