How to protect yourself from Facebook Places

After earlier roll-outs in the USA and Japan, Facebook has now opened up its location-sharing service in the UK.

 

In a breakfast briefing in London, Facebook explained that the new service would make it easier for users to share where they were.

 

But hang on a minute – I don’t want to share where I am. And I don’t want other people to be able to share my location either.

 

I came back late last night after a few days away on a business trip, to find that my next door neighbour had been burgled. So I want to have total control over when (and if) my location is shared and who gets told my location.

 

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The Facebook Friend Suggestions security scare

Warnings are being posted all across Facebook suggesting that users who have received multiple friend suggestions are really infected with a computer virus.

 

A typical version of the warning reads as follows:

VIRUS WARNING: ANYONE WHO HAS GOTTEN A TON OF FRIEND SUGGESTIONS BE CAREFUL! IT IS A VIRUS! IF YOU ACCEPT THEM THEN YOUR ACCOUNT WILL SEND OUT ABOUT 85 TO SOMEONE ELSE!!! WARN YOUR FRIENDS NOW! This is a new virus that is sending requests to spread. DO NOT ACCEPT FRIEND SUGGESTIONS AT THE MOMENT!

The reality, however, is somewhat different. Most importantly, the behaviour and sightings of more than the usual number of Friend Suggestions are not a sign of a computer virus infection.

 

Instead, it appears that Friend Suggestions on Facebook now go to both parties, rather than just the one you specifically suggests takes up your suggestion of a new online connection.

 

So, imagine you are Tom, and you think that your friend Dick should become Facebook friends with Harry. You visit Dick’s Facebook profile, scroll down to where it says “Suggest friends for Dick” and choose Harry’s name.

Your suggestion that Dick should become friends with Harry doesn’t just go to Dick, but it will also now go to Harry as well. Presumably Facebook has made this change in order to encourage more users to interconnect.

 

But there’s more.

 

As Facebook reveals on its help pages about Friend Suggestions, Facebook can alsosuggest possible friends for you to connect with.

 

It does this by automatically examining “the networks that you are a part of, mutual friends, work and education information, contacts imported using the Friend Finder, and many other factors.”

 

Aside from the mysteriously ambiguous “many other factors”, the thing I find concerning there is the reference to Friend Finder.

 

What Facebook means is that they can suggest friends based upon email addresses that you may have imported into Facebook from your email account address book, perhaps when you first set up your account.

 

What many people may not realise is that even if you didn’t add everyone you imported from your address book as a Facebook friend, Facebook can still use those contacts imported from Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc, in order to make future recommendations.

 

Therefore, Facebook may also see your email address in other people’s contact lists, and determine relationships based upon that.

 

If this bothers you (and I can perfectly understand why it would), then Facebook says you can tell it to remove the contacts from its suggestions system. Of course, it might have been better if you hadn’t offered up your address book to Facebook in the first place..

 

Facebook also says that you can change your privacy settings to prevent your profile from being visible to everyone as a potential friend suggestion.

 

More information about Facebook’s Friend Suggestions system can be read online here.

 

No doubt most of the souls forwarding and reposting this latest Facebook security scare to their profiles are oblivious to all these fine details, however, and are still believing that a virus is behind the suggestion messages that they are viewing.

 

Of course, it should still go without saying, that whether you receive a friend request or a friend suggestion, you should exercise caution about who you befriend on a social network – as it could be a cybercriminal rather than a long lost chum who is trying to access your profile.

 

Oh, and don’t forget. If you’re on Facebook you might want to become a Fan of Sophos on Facebook to ensure you are kept up-to-date with the latest security news.

 

 

By Graham Cluley, Sophos

 

Facebook disables chat after security hole discovered

Facebook has taken down its instant messaging-style system which allows members to chat real-time with each other after claims that the system suffers from a serious security problem.

 

According to a report by TechCrunch, a security flaw allows your Facebook friends to secretly spy on your private live chats as well as any see any pending friend requests that you have made.

 

In the past Facebook has insisted that privacy is its “highest priority”, but there isgrowing concern that the site has played fast and loose with the personal information of its 400 million users, encouraging them to share too much private data online and changing privacy settings to be more “open”.

 

A video has been posted on YouTube which allegedly demonstrates the security hole:

 

The news that Facebook has disabled its chat system suggests that they are working on fixing the security problem. Hopefully it will be resolved quickly.

 

But even if this security issue is fixed promptly there are other security issues on Facebook, as with any other social network, that need to be considered if you plan on continuing to use the site. Make sure you read our guidelines for better security and privacy on Facebook.

 

Oh, and you might want to become a Fan of Sophos on Facebook too to ensure you are kept up-to-date with the latest security news.

 

by Graham Cluley, Sophos

 

 

Facebook privacy given a poor scorecard by WhatApp project

Facebook has been rated lower than its social networking competitors Twitter and MySpace for privacy and security, according to a study from Stanford University.

 

According to a report in Forbes, the WhatApp website has rated the security and privacy of Facebook as being lower than that of the Apple iPhone, Twitter and MySpace.

 

Service	Privacy	Security
Facebook	2/5	2/5
Twitter	3/5	3/5
MySpace	3/5	3/5
iPhone	3/5	3/5

WhatApp, which was co-created by Stanford University Law fellow Ryan Calo, describes itself as “an online resource where experts and other users can assess, discuss, and rate the privacy and security of mobile and Internet-enabled applications. Now in Beta, the website combines traditional consumer reporting and review tools with wikis and news feeds to allow users to make informed choices about the applications they download.”

 

Calo told Forbes that he believed Facebook users are concerned about the amount of information applications can access: “I think people are upset because when you download an app, you don’t have any control over what the app developer sees on your profile. There’s the perception among users that they don’t need to give away so much information to have the apps do the same thing as they are currently doing.”

 

However, I think we would be rash to take WhatApp’s scorecard for Facebook at err.. face value. It’s important to note that the WhatApp site’s goal is primarily to look at specific applications, and that the results publicised by Forbes are extrapolated from those individual application scores to give an overall score for how well Facebook as a whole is faring. (I’ve been contacted by Oliver Chiang, the author of the Forbes article, who tells me that WhatApp do rate platforms such as Facebook separately from the apps, so it’s not an aggregation. Sorry about that).

 

What isn’t clear is how well can we verify Carlo’s credentials as an expert, and it’s also not shown how many of the site’s “verified” experts contributed to the scores that have been published so far. Nevertheless, Facebook won’t be best pleased to see it ranked poorly against its competitors.

 

Facebook security and privacy are very real concerns, of course, and this debate is likely to run and run. Many of us may well have good reason to long for the days of 2006, when Facebook privacy was a much simpler thing:

"No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings."

It’s very simple – all I want is to have control over who can see my personal information on Facebook.

But it seems that more and more Facebook is preventing me from achieving that seemingly simple aim.

 

By Graham Cluley, Sophos

 

 

Facebook privacy settings: What you need to know

Facebook is making big changes to its privacy settings that may mean millions of people begin to expose information that they previously considered to be restricted to only their Facebook friends to the entire internet.

This YouTube video explains more.

 

Facebook is recommending that users adopt a series of new privacy settings that would reveal their personal data to anyone on the internet. Chances are that when you login to Facebook today you’ll be advised to make various pieces of your personal information available for “Everyone” to see.

To get a clear picture of what Facebook means by everyone (and its implications) you should check out the revised Facebook privacy policy:

 

"Information set to 'everyone' is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations."

"The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to 'everyone.' You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings. If you delete 'everyone' content that you posted on Facebook, we will remove it from your Facebook profile, but have no control over its use outside of Facebook."

 

So, let’s make this clear. If you make your information available to “everyone”, it actually means “everyone, forever”. Because even if you change your mind, it’s too late – and although Facebook say they will remove it from your profile they will have no control about how it is used outside of Facebook.

 

There’s a real danger that people will go along with Facebook’s recommendations without considering carefully the possible consequences.

 

by Graham Cluley, Sophos