Facebook poses malware danger, report says

Orange County Register ^ | September 18th, 2010 | Jan Norman

[South40]

Facebook is the top source of malware infections among social media sites, according to a new survey by Panda Security, a provider of web based computer security products.

In a survey of 315 U.S. companies with 15 to 1,000 employees, found that 33% have had malware or virus infections on company computers from employee use of social networks and 35% of those suffered some financial loss from the problem. Here are the problems that surveyed companies reported:

[stefanbatory]

I bet most of it is from people gullible enough to click on the links that say “OMG, check this out!”

[MplsSteve]

The company that I work for has banned all access to social networking sites. They started doing it about a year ago.

I don’t know whether the reason was productivity reason or due to the fear of vruses and/or malware though.

I’m not a Facebooker so all in all, I don’t see a problem. But if they block Free Republic - katy, bar the door!

[Wiggins]

One in particular on facebook offered an opportunity to “click on this to see who has been viewing your profile”. Once it's click on, the computer becomes infected. Mostly people hoping to connect with old flames.

[OrangeHoof]

You can get a social disease from Facebook? Who’da thunk it?

[onyx]

Both of your entries make sense.

I recall reading about “click on this to see who has been viewing your profile”.

[gunsequalfreedom]

What is a Facebook?

[snarkpup]

No one gives a flip about internet security. Follow the link to the Orange County Register with decent security settings and this is what you get:

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Turn it on in browser settings to view this mobile website.

I found another article on the same subject here:

Panda Security New Study Finds that 77% of SMB Employees Using Social Networking During Working Hours

Unlike the web programmers at the OC Register, these guys seem to have mastered the fine art of presenting a simple article without demanding a license to kill your machine.

However, check this out: The first two lines of this (second) article are [emphasis mine]:

• Thirty-three percent of US SMBs have been infected by malware propagated via social networks; 23 percent have experienced identity theft on popular social networks

• Facebook takes top spot for social networking-related malware infections, followed by YouTube and Twitter

And down near the end of the article, the author says [emphasis mine]:

"Follow us at: youtube.com/PandaSecurity1 / twitter.com/Panda_Security"

[zeugma]

The number one thing you can do to protect yourself from malware is to simply switch to any browser other than microsoft’s Internet Explorer. My personal favorite is Firefox +several extensions - like adblock, and noscript.

[musicman]

bflr

[Wonder Warthog]

That’s almost as bad as the time when the computer group at the major chemical company I once worked for gave a group seminar on computer security. At the end of the seminar, they passed out magnetic “refrigerator stick-ons” with a catchy phrase (which I now forget).