The personal information of almost 100 million Facebook users have been recently compromised, their information being now available in different places, centralized on the Internet.
This is not the first case when social networks have been targeted. Senior Researcher at ESET, David Haley, commented and widely debated the spam cases that exploited many of the Facebook applications. To help users protect themselves, ESET prepared a list with advice, to help users safely use the social networks.
Regarding the security policy of Facebook, Haley says ” it is clear that the proved commitment of the company is not to take extensive measure to keep the security of the user’s personal data. The reaction of Facebook through which they claimed that no private information was compromised is eloquent. If we were to talk more to the point, Facebook has the right point of view because the data that were compromised were not private, because they weren’t protected by users through the privacy options available on Facebook” Haley also said.
Haley says that the users can change their privacy options right now, however the data that were publicly made available when they were collection are available right now online, being downloading by people from file sharing networks.
This is not the first security breach of Facebook. The spread of the spam was dramatic, and it used a trap proposed to the user, which invoved the Like button on subjects like ” The truth about coca cola” or “teacher nearly killed this boy video”. Many of these applications that are used to scam Facebook users, but other social networks worms are being used as marketing tools, or they ease the way in which hackers can cheat novice users. ” These hackers continued to exploit the Facebook users, by sending spam messages through their accounts or by spreading their own infected links inside the social network” says Haley.
