Spammers, hackers target sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Because of MySpace, Facebook, YOuTube incredible growth in recent years, many spammers, hackers and other crooks are trying to take advantage of it. "What happens in the virtual world . . . is very (similar) to what happens in the physical world," ... Where a lot of people congregate, at some point you're going to have a bad element that shows up and tries to do bad things."

Scammers often set up fake profiles on MySpace, Friendster, Facebook and similar sites and then go about inviting people to become their Internet "friends."

In doing so, they can glean personal information about their potential targets — like their ZIP codes, age or gender — that can be used to fashion legitimate-sounding spam or phishing attacks.

So, watch out!


P.S. Tips for safe networking

• Limit the information you give about yourself.
• Don't automatically assume something sent from a 'friend' is legitimate.
• Be careful about adding strangers to your friends list.
• Don't use links in embedded e-mails to go to any unfamiliar site.
• Set limits on what people can see, you profile, etc

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