Social Media

You might be wondering why the frontpage of Twitter has a big “Edit” line running through it in the screenshot below: The answer, of course, is that this is not the real Twitter page at all. It’s part of an increasingly popular kit used for shenanigans: The scammer downloads the zip, edits the links in the .htm file and places something likely to catch the attention of an end-user underneath the “Edit” line. The fact that the fake content is sitting directly underneath the “New Twitter” promotional text is not a coincidence. ...

Currently a new likejacking-attack is running on Facebook. If a user clicks on the link of a friend which is reads “I Will NEVER TEXT Again After Seeing THIS!! on CLICK HERE TO SEE.”, she or he will automatically “like” that link too due to some clever scripting on the attacking website. A second like-link says “This American GUY must be Stoned to Death for doing this to a GIRL (NO SURVEYS)! … on CLICK HERE TO SEE.”. This is another variant of the same likejacking-attack. ...

NEW YORK — The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 10 popular Facebook applications have been transmitting users’ personal identifying information to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies. The newspaper said Monday that the breach also includes users who set all their information to be completely private. And in some cases, it says, the apps provided access to friends’ names. A Facebook spokesman told the Journal on Sunday that the company would introduce new technology to contain the breach. It’s not clear how long the breach went on. ...

Skype is integrating with Facebook to make it easier to call and video chat with friends and family on the social network. The deal comes amid fevered rumors that Facebook plans to launch a phone of its own. Meanwhile Skype is gearing up for a $100m share issue.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced on their blog that the site will soon be offering new features and controls. The features include New Facebook Groups, a Dashboard for Applications, and the ability to Download Your Information. #1 — Why the “new” Groups? According to Zuckerberg, people frequently tell them: “I’d share this thing, but I don’t want to bother 250 people. Or my grandmother. Or my boss.” Now we thought that’s what Friends Lists are for… but then, even Zuckerberg has admitted that Friends Lists are too difficult for most people to effectively manage. So this “completely overhauled, brand new version of Groups” is really mostly the same old Groups that we’ve been using since early 2009, with some PR spin. ...

Accessing Facebook from a public computer or Internet cafe can now be done more securely. Moving to enhance online security, Facebook on Tuesday said that it will soon offer users the ability to receive one-time passwords on their mobile phones and that it has already enabled the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely. “We’re launching one-time passwords to make it safer to use public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports,” said Facebook product manager Jake Brill in a blog post. “If you have any concerns about security of the computer you’re using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password.” ...

Twitterers are still clogging the micro-blogging service with little messages about the cross-site-scripting problem earlier today. Twitter has announced that the problem has been fixed. A cross-site scripting vulnerability using “onmouseover” was being widely exploited to spread worms and redirect viewers to malicious sites. Story here from The Register.

We have started to see again a large increase in the amount of emails pretending to come from Facebook. There are two types of emails which are being sent in large amounts currently. Both of them use classical types of social engineering techniques. The first type is using the old trick with “the photos”. The final target is a website where SMSes can be sent for “free” (note the quotes). I would like to emphasize again that there is nothing out there for free. Even if you don’t pay for it, those who offer the service (or whatever is given for “free”) do get something in exchange. It might be your telephone number, your email address or something similar which is worth a lot on the Internet. ...

Have you seen a message like this on Facebook? I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!! If so, don’t click on the link. It’s the latest survey scam spreading virally across Facebook, using the tried-and-tested formula used in the past by other viral scams including “Justin Bieber trying to flirt”, “Student attacked his teacher and nearly killed him”, “the biggest and scariest snake” and the “world’s worst McDonald’s customer”. ...

“What are you doing? “To join or to see who invited you, check the attachment.” Hmmm. That looked interesting. After I clicked on it (in virtual environment), Yahoo renamed the attachment from “Invitation+Card.zip” to “Neutral.gif” and gave a warning: Nice work Yahoo.

A Facebook malware attack is on the loose this weekend, enticing users to click a “Distracting Beach Babes” video on their Facebook Walls. The Wall message reads: “this is hilarious! lol 😛 😛 😛 Distracting Beach Babes [HQ] Length: 5:32″. If you see this video on Facebook today, do not click the link: Doing so, and downloading a linked file, will result in malware being installed on your computer. ...

A Pakistani court has ordered the authorities to temporarily block Facebook due to a contest that calls for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The court order follows a petition by a group called the Islamic Lawyers’ Movement, which complained that the contest was “blasphemous.” A search on Facebook reveals two sites featuring such caricatures: one supporting Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who created the caricature of the Prophet, published in Danish newspapers in 2005. ...

The All Facebook blog (not an official Facebook site) is reporting that Facebook’s Public Policy Director, Tim Sparapani has said the company will install privacy settings that are easier to understand and control in the next few weeks. (“Facebook Preparing To Release Simple Privacy Settings” ) The 800-pound gorilla of the social media world has been taking increasing heat recently about its sloppy attitude toward securing users personal information and privacy policy that seems to permit it to do nearly anything with users personal info.. ...

Facebook grew more popular than Myspace just about two years ago, and has been been enjoying steady growth while MySpace flounders trying to reinvent itself. But the recent attention brought to Facebook’s privacy issues -specifically the complaint filed with the US Federal Trade Commission by EPIC pointing out that Facebook data isn’t as private as it once was- has opened a door for MySpace to jam its foot into. The New York Times last week called Facebook’s privacy settings “A bewildering tangle of options,” with 50 settings menus with more than 170 options, and a privacy statement more than 1,200 words longer than the U.S. Constitution. ...

Despite ongoing questions about privacy, Facebook’s new social plugins continue to expand their footprint across the web, with the company announcing on Tuesday that more than 100,000 websites have now deployed them. The plugins –- which allow websites to add Facebook-powered social features without requiring users to log in –- were announced less than a month ago at Facebook’s developer conference, and attracted more than 50,000 publishers in the first week. ...