Unsocial Networks 12. April 2009 – 10:49 by Fraser Henderson - ICELE

We all know about the benefits of social networking but what about the pitfalls? The obvious one is distraction – it is estimated that social networks cost UK businesses £6.5 billion a year in lost productivity. That doesn’t mean I’m in favour of blacklisting such sites; instead I would encourage corporations and public bodies to update their IT ‘acceptable use’ policies accordingly.

However, there are more sinister forces at work. The idea of being ‘friends’ with somebody you haven’t met might be good for kudos but can you be confident of their identity? Trust is an old online problem with worryingly few checks and balances in the social networking field.

I’ve observed that people are generally less alert in these environments too – for example, more likely to click a link in a Twitter feed than in an email. I don’t think people realise that social networking accounts are increasingly attractive to scammers and hackers. For example, when Obama’s Twitter account was hacked at the start of the year it offered the perfect springboard for spam.

The nature of the beast is also the problem. Twitter is a prime example – it has an upper character limit so people tend to use short URL generators like TinyURL. This makes it easier to cloak your final destination. Facebook, on the other hand, allows ‘non-certified’ applications to be installed and as a result many have fallen foul to malicious widgets. [Firefox users’ note: there is an excellent add-on called LongURL mobile expander which can be used to reveal the final destination of web redirectors].

An experiment by IT security firm Sophos tested the integrity of Facebook users back in 2007. After setting up a profile in the name of “Freddi Staur” (an anagram of ‘Fraudster’, pictured here), they sent out 200 friend requests and waited to see what would happen. A total of 87 people responded and of these 82 leaked ‘personal’ information such as full dates of birth.

In addition to these findings, Sophos ‘poked’ a further 100 random Facebook users to see if this form of communication would elicit the same response and encourage people to let Freddi access their details. However, just eight people responded, with only five revealing personal information.

With increasing scope for security lapses in eParticipation land, PEP-NET should take note.

Tags: Facebook, inenglish, security, Twitter