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Facebook the Most Dangerous Social Tool For Businesses
wiredmikey writes "According to a recent study Facebook is by far the most popular and most dangerous social media tool among small-to-medium-sized businesses, with 69 percent of respondents reporting that they have active accounts with this site, followed by Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Facebook is also the top culprit for malware infections and privacy violations, e.g. the leaking of sensitive company information. YouTube took the second spot for malware infection, while Twitter contributed to a significant number of privacy violations. For companies suffering financial losses from employee privacy violations, Facebook was again cited as the most common social media site where these losses occurred, followed by Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn."
Almost all of the last 20 or so stories have been about either social networking sites or Google and its products. Man, I remember when programming topics actually used to make it to the front page. You know, news for nerds.
IT's bigger then that. Human behavior is evolved to a social paradigm. With that certain expectation have become intrinsic to human interaction.
Not the internet has made it easy for a few jackasses to violate those rules of behavior in a massive and automated way.
This means people need to learn to ignore and change certain expectation. Not something that comes easy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Oooh! A talking moose wants my credit card number. That seems fair!"
The most dangerous tool is the one sitting in the chair.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Facebook and similar sites attract a lot of malware, true. How about not using a platform known to be hypersensitive to this malware when accessing these sites? Why is this simple and effective solution never proposed?
Why oh why oh why does the average IT person not contemplate this effective, cheap - yes cheap - and sensible solution? It is almost as if there is a religious dogma against pointing a finger at Windows. Even the most die-hard Windows fanatic surely should see the sense in this approach? If you want to navigate the high seas you'd use something which withstands salty water and is known not to leak. It would be... wise... to use something which withstands malware and is known to survive network contact when navigating the cesspool called social networking.
I am truely flabbergasted by this resistance to change. If you stand to lose ${many} by allowing Windows on the 'net... why not prevent that loss?
--frank[at]unternet.org
then unblock facebook on that one persons or groups computers, not site wide. should be easy to implement.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
To summarize: Alarmist e-zine for PHB's confirms their suspicions that Facebook and YouTube are, in fact, the devil. Why is this on Slashd...oh, it's samzenpus. Never mind...
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Y'know, they don't call them "rootkits" because they originally came out on Windows...
Once again we have another poll which is somehow supposed to represent actual facts.
This is a "study" by a company that sells computer security "solutions" to small and medium-sized businesses. Haven't we all learned by now that these reports are largely designed to scare PHBs into buying the products and services these companies peddle? There's absolutely nothing in TFA that enables us to determine how the firms were chosen, who was interviewed, how they were selected, and whether they have even a clue about how sites like Facebook and YouTube might be the culprits.
Enough breathless reporting of stupid press releases, Slashdot editors. Just because SecurityWeek has no editorial scruples doesn't mean you shouldn't have them.
Because it's easy to prevent a system administrator's account from modifying the system with magical security voodoo. If you believe that kind of bullshit go buy two copies of Norton AV so you'll be twice as protected. It also whitens your teeth!
By reading the comments - they can cause permanent brain damage, unless you have a proper firewall.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Also dangerous in that your HR staff are mucking about on facebook all day instead of working using the excuse that they are getting background information on potential staff. That's a horrible excuse because hiring or firing decisions should not be made on the basis of the trivia that ends up on facebook pages. You get idiots hired because they look good in a photo or have the same hobby as the HR person. Within the normal bounds of mental health and with competant management personality should be irrelevant to most jobs anyway. Profiling beyond competance for the job is almost a complete waste of time.
We take things like facebook too seriously. Nobody in the workplace should care about a teachers "drunken pirate" costume party photo for example, let alone the teacher losing their job over it.
There are 1001 ways a social engineer/criminal/con artist can exploit information found on social networking sites. People who post personal or business information on sites such as Facebook or Twitter are stupid. Want to fight cybercrime? Make the internet anonymous again!