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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MySpace Sues Spammers

MySpace announced that it has filed suit against a number of spammers for posting millions of spam "bulletins" to MySpace users' accounts.

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MySpace infested with spammers and other losers

MySpace.com has trully become a place where spammers rule. They lure users to sexually explicit sites, clog mailboxes with spam messages, and exploit users' trust when speaking to "friends" to obtain passwords that could lead to identity theft.

One recent scam works this way: A spammer posts a number of phony profiles featuring pictures of cute women, often promising nude photos.

A "friend request" with the woman's photo is sent to hundreds of users.

Once the fake profile loads, a blue screen descends, saying the profile is protected by the "MySpace Adult Content Viewer."

Unsuspecting users who try to download the viewer instead get a worm that installs adware on their computers.

Although MySpace tries to fight it but it is a lost battle because there are millions of spammers against dozens of MySpace employees.

Consider yourself warned when you use MySpace.

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