If so far the most irritating things with social networks were perhaps spam friend requests or “spamful” comments, now things how changed for the worse - MySpace users are in for much distress owing to malicious Windows exploits targeting them. Phishing seems to continue making numerous victims even after such a long time.
CAPTCHAs seems to be for the moment for many social networks the best solution concerning the password cracking trouble. These are images with a certain degree of distortion as to prevent bots from penetrating accounts. Still, there are a number of other ways for an unsuspecting Web user to compromise their accounts.
Unfortunately, networks did not put much effort into properly informing users about the danger of phishing and the ways to avoid it. They have only advised against giving out passwords. Hence, the great number of compromised accounts.
Instead of emphasizing this giving-out-the-password aspect, what social networks really need to be doing is come up with a feasible solution. They need to remember that users are most of the time tricked into releasing their data by accessing a phony link which appears to be coming from a trusted source such as one of the friends.
Social networks should start educate their users on how to best secure their accounts. This would imply informing them on different methods of checking the authenticity of messages, instructing them to get security updates from their OS, and, very important, becoming their advocate in dealing with spam and viruses.
What makes this the largest threat to social networks? Phishing represents a huge threat to users, the confidentiality of their data , and to the trust social networks rely on from their users. Social networks can’t do much to tackle this threat but blacklisting IP addresses (which can be disguised using proxies), blacklisting URLs that rapidly increase their popularity and mainly giving users a proper education concerning security.
