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Security analysts warn of social media dangers

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

January 19, 2011 | 2 min read

Social media channels are proving to be fertile hunting grounds for cyber criminals, according to an annual report compiled by IT security analysts, Sophos.

The report highlights the increasing disparity in sophistication of anti-spam security measures employed by email services and their social media counterparts whilst noting the greater success rate of spam which apparently originates from a friend.

Criminals have not been slow to catch on, migrating to sites such as Twitter and Facebook - the latter of which does not vet new applications as Apple does.

As a consequence analysts are urging users of such sites to take down as much personal information as possible and imploring the sites themselves to beef up their security.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, explained: “Spam criminals are moving to social networks. I would love to see social networks be more stringent about password strength and better advise people on how to protect themselves.

“However, at the moment, all the focus is on making sign-ups as quick and pain free as possible, so that they keep on growing their user base…on sites like Facebook, where members don’t pay, users are the product and not the customer.”

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