Cyber-criminals to target social networking sites

Experts predict that cyber-criminals will target social networking sites in 2008.

Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at ScanSafe, says that because of the third party applications available on sites such as Bebo and Facebook, users are more susceptible to phishing scams and hackers.

Landesman said that information people provided about themselves (you know, where you work, who you fancy, all that stuff) gave cyber-criminals the ability to contrive more defined searches and hence, more believable scams.

Due to the social networking boom of 2007 it’s no surprise that fake-links on peoples’ pages, which "link" to videos or similar, are becoming increasingly popular, particularly in the last few months. Google’s Orkut recently saw booby-trapped links which endeavoured to steal users bank account details.

So if you’re rather fond of MySpace or Bebo, you’d do well to remember that someone who says they’re minding three or four squillion dollars for a random dictator who was involved in a car crash which conveniently wiped out all his family in one fell swoop may not be telling the truth. There are all kinds of people out there, kids.