Zuckerberg is on Google+. Surprised?

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Word is going around that “Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg registered a Google+ account” without any confirmation from the Facebook founder.
An article in International Business Times in San Francisco says:

As of Saturday evening, he had 22 people in his Circle and 2994 people added him on their Circles.

According to a tweet from allegedly from Robert Scoble:  “…Zuckerberg just texted me back. Says “Why are people so surprised that I’d have a Google account?”

Verifying any truth from the tweet seems problematic. [Read more…]

Karma hits Zuckerberg via Lovely Faces

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Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook experienced karma first-hand as Lovely Faces, a dating website, featured 250,000 profiles of men and women whose photos were scraped without permission from the social network.

Lovely Faces founders Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico used an automated software that scraped the photos and profiles of Facebook users over a period of time. In a site that explains their purpose for Lovely Faces, the duo was very clear about their plan: steal 1 million Facebook profiles, filter them with face-recognition software, and post them on a custom-made dating website sorted by their facial expressions characteristics. Here’s a more detailed explanation on how they did it. They also have a video to go with it. [Read more…]

Social Media Sites Risk Growing Threats and Attacks

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Exploring Social Media article series badgeAccording to Investor’s Business Daily, evil is sweeping social networks, moving beyond email and blogs to where you like to virtually hang out and congregate:

Security experts last week warned that a new strain of the Koobface virus is hitting Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. It looks for links and passwords to other social networking sites.

Social networking site owners work actively to put a lid on nefarious activity. On Tuesday, a federal judge in northern California issued a temporary restraining order against three people accused of widespread spamming and phishing attacks on Facebook. It comes three months after Facebook won a suit that prevents another group of spammers from using or accessing Facebook data and applications.

Virus creators are increasingly targeting social networking sites and other Web 2.0 technologies such as the micro-blogging site Twitter and instant messaging services from Google, AOL and others. Virus writers are also creating fake profiles of celebrities, real friends or business associates hoping people will link with them. Users can be tricked into linking to the fake profile, which can be loaded with various forms of malicious software.

The article by Brian Deagon showcased Facebook users who responded to an email from a “friend on Facebook” to visit a link that initiated a program that “rifled through his hard drive, installed malicious software and sent the same e-mail to all of Daradics’ friends on his Facebook profile.” [Read more…]

Blog Scams: Look Before You Click

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As part of my research into blog scams, I ran across a new video by Consumer Reports WebWatch called “Look Before You Click”.


Consumer Reports WebWatch – Look Before You Click

The WebWatch’s ‘Look Before You Click’ Campaign was created with a grant from the New York State Office of Attorney General and uses a cartoon animation and satrical musical verse to educate Internet users about Internet fraud that comes in through email, blogs, and websites. [Read more…]