Are you caught in the arms race against social network scammers?

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Researchers have found malicious messages and posts on social networks are so common they've even come up with their own name for it; ‘socware’ and developed a Facebook application to tackle the problem.

A study carried out by a team from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California revealed that almost half of all the users of their specially created app called 'MyPageKeeper' were exposed to at least one malicious post during the four months of the study.

The researchers described efforts to protect social network users from the efforts of spammers as “an arms race.” They also identified some obvious warning signs, for example the term ‘OMG’ was 332 times more likely to appear in a malicious status update.

One way to reduce the chances of falling for an online scam is to take our ThreatTest, which presents you with real life scams in a safe environment so you can check if you would be caught out.

Some simple steps to reduce the risk of being targeted by social networking scammers include:

• Make sure you have anti-virus software on your computer and update it regularly.
• Before clicking on a link, check the website address. Open a browser window and use a search engine to find the site. If the addresses don’t match, it's likely that the link you have been sent is fake.
• Never open messages from people you don't know. Delete them and empty the recycle bin straight away.
• Check the developer's website and reviews from other users to ensure it's not malicious before allowing an application access to your profile.

There is a lot more information in our Knowledge Centre guides about social networking and scams.








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