John Pescatore

MSNBC has a piece on a “vigilante” hijacking a number of Facebook group sites. Facebook’s statement helpfully pointed out “We are still investigating this situation, but an extremely small number of groups have been affected.” Sort of like a doctor saying “I haven’t really finished checking, but at first glance the tumor I did find is pretty tiny.”

MSNBC must be ramping up their security coverage – they had another item on attacks on Twitter sending bogus Direct Messages (private messages between Twitterers) in phishing attacks. MSNBC quotes Twitter’s spokeperson as helpfully pointing out:

Twitter also suggested users who may have gotten the fake Direct Messages to change their log-ins and passwords to prevent unauthorized use of their accounts. Users “should “feel free” to change their passwords if they are worried,” the company said.

That is sort of like the bank saying “Users should “feel free” to use a different ATM machine if the one you were using gave your money to someone else.”

NetworkWorld weighed in with guidance for Facebook users about steps they should take to be safe from “scammy” games that are popular on Facebook. Playing games on Facebook pretty means you agree to give the game company full access to your profile – but even if you don’t play the game, if friends have access to your profile when they play it turns out often they are giving away access to your profile info.  The piece points out that Facebooks “privacy” policies are “ever-changing,” like most consumer-grade sites, so users need to constantly check and keep up with changes.

This is sort of the like if the cellphone companies occasionally decided that if someone in your speed dial list signed up for direct marketing calls, then your phone number would be given to the phone scammers, too.

Looks like responsible users have to be pretty busy keeping themselves safe out there. Sort of like if on an airplane all the passengers had keep looking out the window to avoid other planes, and also remember to lower the landing gear…

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