Social Networking

Today has been quite a busy day for scammers. We have been tracking a global scam/spam run that targets Facebook users. The lure used in the run is a familiar one: Facebook Password Reset Confirmation! Customer Support. The email looks like the following [Just it won’t notify you it’s Spam, it’s my own Software 😉 ]: The activity on this particular scam run has been global from the beginning. The malware in the attachment is pretty much what one would expect: downloaders, password-stealing Trojan, fake-AV, or bot stuff, depending on which one you got. Check out the Artemis map of this malware: ...

About a year or so ago one of the “McMarketeers” decided it would be fun to run a campaign against “fram”–spam that friends send you. As you might guess, we in the Labs have no friends, so it was no problem for us to ridicule the idea. However, around the coffee machine the other day I got involved in a quick discussion about spam on Facebook. A long-term social networker genuinely thought that Facebook spam did not exist and that all the noise was from Facebookers playing games or using annoying apps. So I offered to write up an example. ...

Del Harvey who leads Twitter’s Trust and Safety team blogged yesterday that the social networking/micro-blogging service has begun filtering all links in Twitter Direct Messages to stop phishing: “Since these attacks occur primarily on Direct Messages and email notifications about Direct Messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications.” ...

A while ago I was writing about twitter spam and I was trying to make a brief definition of this kind of spam: It follows a lot of users , has 1 post and is followed only by a few persons. Well, this changed now, because the theme became much more interesting for the people on Twitter: how to loose weight. Ironically, the URLs on Twitter also make a diet – they always get “compressed” using link shortener services. ...

There’s an angelically tinged infection doing the rounds at the moment that has more than a whiff of sulphur about it. We can’t say for definite, but it looks like the point of this little angel is to turn your PC into a file storage area for an IRC channel since it dumps you into #music IRC channels and makes sure you can accept various media files. Our tale begins with an Email, claiming you have a “funny picture from Facebook friends” waiting for you at Oast(dot)com: ...

New comScore data shows that Facebook and Twitter use has skyrocketed on mobile devices over the past year, and that on-the-go MySpace use is now on the decline, according to MediaPost. Here are the numbers: Facebook now sees 25.1 million mobile users as of January 2010, which is more than double the January 2009 total. Twitter grew to 4.7 million during the same period, which is four times the year-ago total, the report said. ...

This morning while I was enjoying my coffee I received an event notification for my personal Facebook account. It was for a group called “See Who’s Spying On Your Profile – GET NOTIFIED -”. and “See Everyone Who Views Your Profile”. Immediately, my security hat went on and I started to investigate. At first glace, they are both pyramid schemes. In both, you become a fan, then you have to suggest the page to 50 of your friends to move onto the next stage. From there the tactics diverge slightly. In the first one, you need to take a marketing quiz that asks for all sorts of personal info, and you need to put in your Facebook username and password, so they can “monitor” your profile. AND you have to provide them with your mobile number. Now wait a minute… why would they need my mobile number? ...

It’s official: Twitter has surpassed 10 billion tweets. While Gigatweet’s counter is down due to over-traffic., you can tell by the actual tweet ID numbers that we have crossed the magical threshold. The milestone shows that Twitter’s still growing at a rapid pace: it broke 1 billion tweets in November 2008 and 5 billion tweets just four months ago. So who was the lucky person that sent out tweet 10 billionth tweet? Tweet #10 billion apparently belongs to a protected user, as API calls won’t allow us to see that specific status update. Via @timdorr, here is Tweet #9,999,999,999 and tweet #10,000,000,001. ...

Facebook Connect integration with Yahoo Mail! The new feature means that Yahoo Mail users can now connect their Facebook accounts and integrate their Facebook friends’ email addresses into their Yahoo Contacts list. Users can visit the Import Contacts page to be guided through he Facebook friend import process. What do you think of this, do you like it or dislike it. Tell us in the comments!

“Big Brother Brazil” is a Brazilian reality TV program adapted from the popular Big Brother television series. The show is about a group of people living together in a purpose-built Big Brother house, isolated from the outside world, while being monitored by cameras 24×7. The television series is viewed by scores of people during primetime hours, but live feeds are also available from multiple cameras in the house on the Web. Part of the popularity is due to the fact that some of the videos are suitable only for adult viewing. ...