Is Facebook the riskiest social networking site? According to a survey by Sophos released last week, 72% of companies surveyed indicated they had concerns about the safety of employees using the Facebook social networking site. The concern was that an increase in viruses and other computer infections were a direct result of employees using Facebook on company computers.
As a member of the IT department on a college campus, I can vouch for the concern. It is incredibly easy to transmit nasties via links, applications, and messages on Facebook. Most Facebook users think that if it’s coming through Facebook, whether it is through a friend’s status posting, a wall posting, an invitation to an application, or through an email, then it must be virus free and safe. This is, of course, not the case, as any link has the potential to be infected, as does any application, even if approved by Facebook. These things are not automatically vetted through any kind of oversight on Facebook’s part, and people should handle anything coming to them through Facebook with the same caution as anything coming to them through their email inbox.
I am constantly amazed at how often friends and family’s computers are infected. It is well-known that I use no virus protection on my own personal laptop (that no one ever uses but me) and I’ve never gotten a virus or trojan. Yet my family, who should know better, are constantly needing me to fix some problem or other that resulted from a virus or trojan they picked up by visiting some link someone gave them, or opening an email from someone that would, to me, have looked suspicious. It is frustrating as a geek to deal with these issues repeatedly. The attitude is, “it was on Facebook, it was safe, right?”
The Sophos study is quite extensive and I recommend at least looking over what is there to prepare yourself for future issues you may deal with when it comes to viruses coming from social networking sites. At the very least, it’s a heads up!
I know that Facebook itself has virus problems. I have about 1000 friends and every week 1 or 2 have their account hacked. Either they don’t know how or a rogue FB app did it. It’s scary.
I, too, work in IT on a college campus and I see the same things you do. The problem is not Facebook but, rather, human behavior. You said your family “should know better.” So should mine. I’ve drilled it in their heads but it just doesn’t matter. And with social engineering getting better and better, we see more and more student computers infected and even faculty/staff computers because the antivirus systems simply can’t keep up. Our main IT department is even considering dropping Antivirus availability because it has become a reactionary proposition.