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)