Posts Tagged ‘Social network service’

7 Things Facebook Should Do To Increase Security

Published by pratyushkp on July 22nd, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via Wikipedia

Post from mashable authored by Eugene Kaspersky

Eugene Kaspersky is CEO of Kaspersky Lab, the company he co-founded in 1997, which is now the world’s largest, privately-held anti-malware company. You can follow him on Twitter @e_kaspersky and his blog at eugene.kaspersky.com.

For the past seven years we have seen how Facebook has dramatically changed the way people communicate while it has formed a new culture of online socializing.

For most people, Facebook has been about keeping in touch with friends and family in a totally new way. But for security researchers, such as myself, it has led to seven years of new challenges for the security industry. The main issue with social networking and security is that social networks are, well, social, and when the human mind gets involved, vulnerabilities can be exploited. I’m talking about human vulnerabilities, those against which it’s hard to defend.

Many Facebook users lack knowledge and experience about how to protect themselves in the social networking environment, which has made the situation worse. Facebook appeals to new Internet users who often lack the computer savvy to identify online threats, and the most vulnerable segment of the audience — kids — have little life experience required to make reasonable decisions.

Because of this, I believe Facebook needs to enhance the security and privacy features of its site so the problems don’t escalate out of control. With the help of my colleagues, here are seven key recommendations I believe will make Facebook a safer place:


1. Enforce Full HTTPS Browsing


This way, all users can make sure no one is snooping into their conversations, even if they’re browsing Facebook through an untrusted Internet connection. Additionally, it will render attack tools such as Firesheep completely useless.

I admire the fact that Facebook has enabled optional HTTPS browsing in its recent security features roll-out. However, I don’t think the option is clearly marked enough for most users to find and utilize it. Therefore, I feel that this feature should be made mandatory for everyone.


2. Implement Two-Factor Authentication


Banks are offering e-tokens to their customers to safely access their online banking accounts; but in a world where social networking sites are becoming more and more important to what we do online, users should also have the same technology available for protecting their Facebook accounts.

This option should be enforced and mandatory, otherwise it may easily be lost in the depth of account settings. Following Facebook’s initiative to send verification codes via SMS, I suggest the company develop a mobile application that will generate a one-time password in addition to the master password. This way, an attacker would have to compromise not one, but two devices to access a Facebook account. This is not an easy task even for an experienced hacker.


3. Make Clear Which Facebook Apps Are Trusted


Malicious Facebook apps are being analyzed and reported by researchers on a daily basis. Facebook needs to perform a thorough security check and approve all incoming applications to make sure no malicious app makes its way onto a user’s profile.

At the very least, allow users to add a list of trusted/approved applications to his or her profile. If the person wants to use an application that is not trusted, they should be able to run it in some sort of “profile sandbox,” so that any malicious activity would not affect their friends and family.


4. Tighten the “Recommended” Privacy Controls


Currently, Facebook’s recommended privacy settings easily allow for an attacker to become the friend of a friend of a target, and consequently to access data needed to reset a password for an email account, or to misuse other personal information. Why does Facebook allow “everyone” to access status, photos, posts, bio, favorite quotes and family and relationships by default?

In the security market we follow a simple rule that works: “Disable everything, then enable the things you really need.” If Facebooks wants to take steps to actually make its site safer, the default setting should make personal information visible only to friends. Allow the users to decide later whether they want to change their data exposure.


5. Make Permanent Account Deletion Easier


Permanently deleting a Facebook account should … permanently delete the account. Respect the user’s will to entirely wipe out his presence on Facebook, without worrying that some materials have been left available on the Internet, and make permanent account deletion a simpler process that doesn’t require a special request to Facebook customer support.


6. Commit to Parental Controls


Allow parents to set up limited-access accounts for their children, as sub-accounts under their own Facebook presences. The limited sub-accounts could automatically be turned into full-access accounts once children reach the age of consent.

My colleagues and I support initiatives to protect users under 18, as expressed in California’s SB242, which extends the opportunities for parents to control their children’s social media accounts.


7. Better Educate Users


I value Facebook’s commitment to educate users about security and privacy in social networks, including the initiative to set up dedicated Pages to these topics (Facebook Safety, Facebook Security and Facebook Privacy). However, no matter what sort of protection surrounds Facebook users, those privacy features will remain useless should users lack the awareness.

For this reason, I recommend extending the practice by introducing more opportunities for user education. A good example would be to launch daily webinars that cover the most important aspects of Facebook security in the clearest and simplest way possible for the general public.

It is also the belief of myself and my colleagues that a closer interaction with security vendors will assist in building a stronger community to bolster critical Facebook initiatives and allow for more informed decisions. An advisory board consisting of the most authoritative experts in the security community, and regular summits to review past and future initiatives could bring additional value to the development of a safer Facebook.

These are seven realistic, doable and actionable steps that can dramatically increase the safety and privacy of Facebook’s users. Of course, no technology can guarantee 100% security as long as the human factor is involved. Still, Facebook can and should do everything it can to protect its users and keep them safe.

  • 7 Things Facebook Should Do To Increase Security [OPINION] (mashable.com)
  • Bitdefender Steps Up Against Social Network Spam, Releases New Security Suite (readwriteweb.com)
  • Facebook will throw you under the bus (secforall.info)
  • Google+: How Paranoid Are You About Privacy? (thechromesource.com)
  • Oz lawmakers mull Facebook parental snoop rules (go.theregister.com)
  • Google and Facebook splurge on lobbying in Q2 (digitaltrends.com)
Tags: , , , Internaut, Kaspersky Lab, Online banking, social media blog, , , , Yevgeny Kaspersky

LinkedIn Surpasses Myspace For U.S. Visitors To Become No. 2 Social Network; Twitter Not Far Behind

Published by pratyushkp on July 9th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Professional social network Linkedin surpassed Myspace in terms of traffic to become the No. 2 most visited social networking site in the U.S. in June. LinkedIn, which has seen a resurgence of traffic after its IPO in May, reached an all-time high of 33.9 million unique visitors in June compared to Myspace, which saw 33.5 million unique visitors (that’s down from 34.9 million in May). Hopefully Myspace’s new owners can recharge the troubled social network.

Twitter posted record U.S. traffic, with June as the first month the site saw over 30 million unique visitors. Twitter.com had 30.6 million unique visitors in June, compared to 27 million unique vistors in May. The increase in traffic is actually a big win for Twitter, which splits traffic between its own mobile clients and the many third-party clients that are used to access the network.

Facebook also reached an all-time high in terms of U.S. traffic in June, according to newly released comScore data. In June, Facebook saw 160.8 million unique vistors in the U.S., which is up from 157.2 million uniques in May. The company also announced that it crossed the 750 million active users mark worldwide in June as well.

Tumblr saw 11.8 million unique visitors in June, up from 10.7 million unique visitors in May. In June, we reported that Tumblr was seeing around 400 million pageviews per day, thanks in part to international growth and faster response times.

Source :- http://techcrunch.com

  • LinkedIn Surpasses Myspace For U.S. Visitors To Become No. 2 Social Network; Twitter Not Far Behind (techcrunch.com)
  • Now You Can Use LinkedIn To Stay Up To Date On Who’s Getting Hired (And Fired) (techcrunch.com)
  • LinkedIn Passes Myspace to Become No. 2 U.S. Social Network (businessweek.com)
  • Social networking sites receiving more hits (cash-bandit.com)
  • Social Networking Accounts for 1 of Every 6 Minutes Spent Online [STATS] (huguesrey.wordpress.com)
  • Social Networking Accounts for 1 of Every 6 Minutes Spent Online [STATS] (mashable.com)

Zuckerberg on Google+: It’s a Validation of Facebook’s Vision

Published by pratyushkp on July 7th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via CrunchBase

What does Mark Zuckerberg think of Google+, the search giant’s new social network?

We were curious, so we asked Zuckerberg two questions at Facebook’s video chat event in Palo Alto, California: Will there be group video chat in the future? And what does he think of Google+ Hangouts, Google’s new group video chat feature?

On the first question, Zuckerberg simply said that he “wouldn’t rule out anything,” but argued that we shouldn’t knock the value of one-on-one video chat, especially with a platform as large as Facebook. He also used the opportunity to make it clear that the partnership with Skype has been going on for a long time, even before Tony Bates became the CEO of Skype. “We’ve been working with Skype for a while,” he told the audience.

Facebook’s CEO danced around the second question. He reiterated his key talking point: that the next five years are about building apps on top of the social infrastructure that has been built during the past five years. Zuckerberg predicts that a lot of companies that haven’t traditionally looked at social networking will be focused on integrating it into their apps. He cited Netflix as one example, and was clearly alluding to Google as another.

While he didn’t give Google+ a thumbs up or a thumbs down, he did say that the rise of social in more companies was in line with his view of the world. “I view a lot of this as validation as to how the next five years are going to play out,” he noted during his talk.

Zuckerberg doesn’t seem concerned by the potential threat Google+ presents. “Our job is to stay focused,” he said.

Source :- http://mashable.com

  • Ghost of Google+ Haunts Facebook-Skype Event (searchengineland.com)
  • Facebook Launches New Video Chat Service, Skype Integration (paidcontent.org)
  • Facebook Unveils Deal With Skype (news.sky.com)
  • Facebook “Awesome” Announcement Strewn with Veiled Google+ References (slashgear.com)
  • Facebook launches video-chat with a little help from Skype (itoddaily.com)
  • Facebook, Skype partner on video calling (cbc.ca)

Study: You’ve Never Met 7% Of Your Facebook “Friends”

Published by pratyushkp on June 17th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

A just-released Pew study on the ways people use social networking sites has found, unsurprisingly, that the most popular social network is Facebook, with 92% of social networking users reporting that they have a Facebook account.

The study also found that on average Facebook users have about 229 Friends, with about 22% of their total Friends list being comprised of people they know from high school, 12% extended family, 10% coworkers, 9% college friends, 8% immediate family, 7% people from extracurricular groups and 2% being neighbors.

According to Pew, the average Facebook user has never met 7% of their Facebook “Friends” in real life, which means that on average about 16 people on a given Facebook Friends list are actually more like strangers. Users on average have only met 3% of their list (around 7 people) just once.

These numbers seem about right: A quick scroll down my Facebook Friends list reveals a smattering of people I’ve just added because I know “of” them and a few people I’ve added who I’ve met once at a conference. These not-quite friends Facebook Friends serve as reminders that Facebook should make it easier to mass “un-Friend.”

Either that or come up with a different word for the relationship.

Source :- http://techcrunch.com

  • Study: You’ve Never Met 7% Of Your Facebook “Friends” (techcrunch.com)
  • Facebook Users Have More IRL BFFs (And Less Loneliness!) [Social Networks] (gizmodo.com)
  • Your Facebook Friends Are Mainly From High School (businessinsider.com)
  • Facebook Users Have More Real Friends (newser.com)
  • Facebook Users Have More Close Friends [STUDY] (mashable.com)
  • How You Can Get More Facebook Friends (ronmedlin.com)
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