PI Newswire

You may be seeing less spam in your email inbox and more on your Facebook wall, according to internet experts.

That’s because spammers are increasingly targeting social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

According to the Wall Street Journal, spammers hit four million Facebook users every day. However, Facebook is fighting back by blocking 200 million malicious actions a day. Those are posts with links to things like viruses, spyware and malware.

With more than 800 million users, experts say preventing and detecting spam on Facebook is becoming more difficult.

They say there are ways you can protect yourself and your devices.

“If you see a post on your wall that looks suspicious delete it immediately,” Nicholas Skrepetos, CTO of consumer software for Support.com told 9NEWS. “If something doesn’t look right it’s probably not right. Don’t install applications on Facebook if you aren’t 100 percent sure that they’re safe. If you see someone that says, ‘Hey install this really cool application. It will let you see who’s looking at your profile,’ it’s probably not true.”

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Employers and recruiters have discovered a treasure trove of information about potential job applicants on social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and so-called ‘social media background checks’ are becoming more popular and prevalent than ever. However, the use of social media background checks for job applicants has become controversial and can present legal risks. Failure to utilize social media resources can arguably be the basis of a negligent hiring claim if an unfit person was hired for a position where a search of the internet may have raised a “red flag.” Conversely, employers face numerous landmines and pitfalls that can include that include privacy, discrimination, and accuracy issues. Lawsuits and developments in this area will likely be an ongoing topic in 2012. This is Trend Number 3 of the fifth annual ‘Employment Screening Resources (ESR) Top 10 Trends in Background Checks’ for 2012. To view the list of trends, visit http://www.esrcheck.com/ESR-Top-10-Trends-in-Background-Checks-for-2012.php.
The Lure of Social Media Background Checks

It is important to keep in mind that not only will social media searches be a critical part of pre-employment background screening, but there may be considerable activity in how social media is handled after a person is hired. Every employer should have a social media policy for current employees. This article, however, is focused on pre-employment selection and screening.

No discussion on employment screening background checks these days is complete without an analysis of how the Internet is used for uncovering information about job candidates. A social media search allows an employer to literally “look under the hood,” and hopefully find out who a person really is. Not only does a social media search help in finding candidates, but it may prove to be an invaluable due diligence tool. For example, if a person’s blogs, social networking page, or tweets appear to promote inappropriate sexual activity or perhaps threats of violence, an employer may want to think twice before putting such a person in contact with groups at risk, such as children, the aged, or the infirmed. Likewise, if a person has made derogatory or unprofessional comments about co-workers or past employers, or engaged in online harassment, those are things that any Human Resources manager may be interested in knowing about.

However, while employers and recruiters may feel they hit the information jackpot on potential job applicants by using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, business networking sites like LinkedIn, videos on YouTube, search engines like Google, and various blogs and posts, the unrestricted use of social media background checks can land them in hot water since just because certain information is online does not mean it is risk free or even true.

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A new site, MyPermissions.org, makes it easy to herd a posse of wild cats – aka the hoard of applications and sites to which we’ve granted permission to access our information on Twitter, Facebook and more.

MyPermissions doesn’t ask for your personal information or login details, thank goodness. Otherwise, it would be a phishing goldmine.

Rather, the site simply offers a handy set of links to permissions lists. It also allows you to easily revoke access from the permissions pages.

On top of that, MyPermissions offers a reminder service: a monthly email via ifttt that prompts you to check your permissions.

Of course, you can set up a reminder on your own calendar and bookmark permissions pages on your own, but MyPermissions is a handy place to do it all from one spot.

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Massachusetts authorities apparently thought that asking nicely would suffice to keep secret their subpoena for information on a Twitter user involved with Occupy Wall Street. They thought wrong.

So when the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office sent its request to Twitter, its subpoena ended up in the inbox of the DA’s target, following a decision by Twitter to share it as part of its privacy policy.

The user in question goes by the handle @p0isAn0N, who last week posted the document in full on Scribd. Dated December 14, the subpoena requests IP address information about the accounts of @p0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, as well as “Guido Fawkes” and two Twitter hashtags: #BostonPD and #d0xcak3.

At the bottom of the document, a Suffolk county assistant district attorney asked Twitter not to share the request with any of its users, since such an action could “impede the ongoing criminal investigation.” Twitter has since said it did not follow that request due to its privacy policy.

“We can’t comment on any specific order or request,” Twitter spokesperson Matt Graves told ReadWriteWeb in a statement about the matter. “However, to help users protect their rights, it is our policy to notify our users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so.”

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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has established a compound in Virginia that focuses on one very important aspect of international espionage: social network spying.

According to the Associated Press, which was provided some insight into the CIA’s operations, the Open Source Center, a team also known as the “vengeful librarians,” analyzes up to 5 million tweets a day to gauge public opinion around the world. The group also examines messages shared via Facebook and comments made in Internet chat rooms, in addition to listening in on more traditional forms of information dissemination, such as TV news channels and local radio stations.

But before U.S.-based privacy advocates get too concerned about the CIA’s practices, it’s worth noting that the entirety of its actions, the center’s director, Doug Naquin, told the AP, centers on the examination of social activity in other countries.

The U.S. government is barred by law from spying on tweets, Facebook messages, or e-mails sent by U.S. citizens without a warrant.

According to the AP, the Open Source Center was first established after the 9/11 attacks to combat international terrorism. But now, the group told the AP, its focus goes far beyond a focus on terrorism, and examines public opinion on a host of matters around the world.

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You are representing a client in a personal injury matter. During pre trial voir dire proceedings and during the trial itself, can you search for and monitor jurors’ and potential jurors’ Twitter accounts and social network Internet postings? What are your obligations should you uncover evidence of juror misconduct?

You represent a client in a wrongful discharge matter against the client’s former employer. You have reason to believe that certain high-level employees of the employer are dissatisfied and may be likely to post unfavorable comments about the employer on their private social networking pages. Can you send a “friend” request to these employees to gain access to their private social media pages?

Since the publication of the last Eye on Ethics column on Facebook, November of 2010, “Facebook: State Bar Opinions Address Information Gathering,” there have been some new state bar opinions that have addressed various issues that relate to social networking. The topics covered include monitoring jurors’ social network and Internet postings, and whether a lawyer can “friend” high-level employees of an adverse represented party.

I. Monitoring jurors’ social network and Internet postings

New York County Lawyers’ Association Committee on Professional Ethics Opinion 743 (2011) addressed the question of whether a lawyer can monitor jurors’ social network and Internet postings. Referring to Rule 3.5 Maintaining and Preserving the Impartiality of Tribunals and Jurors of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, the committee noted that a lawyer is prohibited from any direct or indirect communication with a juror during trial and certain types of communications are also prohibited after trial. Subparts (a)4 and (a)5 of the New York Rule states as follows:

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Social networks make obtaining sensitive background information on people as a prelude to stealing their identities – and running attacks on corporations – easier than ever before.

Ira Winkler, president of ISAG (Internet Security Advisors Group), an ex-NSA officer and cybercrime guru, has called for increased security awareness training. “People don’t realise what they are putting out there,” he said. “Computers are making people easier to use everyday.”

Speaking at the RSA Europe conference in London on Wednesday, Winkler outlined a range of attacks that social networking might enable. Information on LinkedIn, for example, has been used as a prelude to targeted attacks against corporates or government agencies as part of the expanding list of so-called Advanced Persistent Threat-style (APT) attacks commonly blamed on China. Lower-level criminals can use information on social networks such as Facebook to guess the answers to password reset questions, for example. Worse still, 4Square users are giving away their location every time they log in to a venue, revealing to potential burglars that they are away from home in the process.

Much of this type of activity is wrongly described as social engineering, according to Winkler. The security guru said the term social engineering has been bastardised. Its original meaning referred to an interaction with people where they would be directly manipulated into performing actions or giving away confidential information. The bastardised term is now misapplied to “check this out” lures in mass-mailed computer viruses or even to the lifting of sensitive information consumers have unwittingly left on social networking sites, he says.

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Social media has provided it’s users with an easy way to share pictures and status updates with family members, friends, and coworkers on a day-to-day basis, but they aren’t the only ones you’re sharing your personal life with.

Kurt Nordland never thought that the pictures of him enjoying a beer with his friends would land him in big trouble with the insurance company paying him his “Workers Comp Benefits.” He was dropped from his policy soon after the pictures were posted.

“I was extremely surprised they could just go on your Facebook and pull these pictures out,” Nordland said.

Experts like to refer to this new trend as “Social Media Snooping”.

Insurance companies have the ability to see every social media update you make depending on your privacy settings.

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The U.S. government’s investigation against WikiLeaks and its supporters went beyond its efforts to obtain data from Twitter. A new report reveals that the government also used secret orders to obtain information from Google and internet service provider Sonic.net pertaining to the accounts of U.S.-based, former WikiLeaks spokesman Jacob Appelbaum.

The orders, issued last January for Google and in April for Sonic, remained secret until Sonic succeeded to convince a court to lift the seal on its order so that Appelbaum could be informed about it, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The order to Google directed the search giant to hand over the IP address Appelbaum used to log into his Gmail account as well as the email and IP addresses of anyone he communicated with going back to Nov. 1, 2009. That’s the month that former Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning is believed to have first made contact with WikiLeaks before allegedly leaking two U.S. military videos, as well as more than a million classified and otherwise sensitive military and U.S. State Department documents. The order to Sonic sought the same type of information, including the email addresses of people with whom Appelbaum communicated, but did not seek the content of that correspondence.

Sonic told the Journal that it sought to fight the order but lost, and was forced to turn over the requested information. Challenging the order was “rather expensive, but we felt it was the right thing to do,” Sonic’s chief executive, Dane Jasper, told the newspaper.

It’s unclear if Google fought the order it received.

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A new survey of American teenagers and young adults has discovered that three out of every 10 have had their Facebook, Twitter or MySpace accounts broken into for the purposes of snooping or impersonation.

And most know who was responsible.

The poll, conducted by Associated Press-MTV, asked a total of 1355 people between the ages of 14 and 24 about their experiences online, and suggests that the problem has doubled since 2009.

A typical scenario would be a young person leaving their computer unlocked while they leave the room, or forgetting to log out of Facebook, Twitter or an email account, giving someone else present the opportunity to snoop on emails or post an embarrassing status update using the account owner’s name.

Richard Lindenfelzer, a 20-year-old student from Ithaca College in New York, explained how he had left his Facebook account open, giving a friend an opportunity to post comments about his love life.

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Police in Thailand have arrested a university student who is said to have admitted hacking into the Prime Minister’s Twitter account and posting messages accusing her of incompetence.

22-year-old Aekawit Thongdeeworakul, a fourth year architecture student at Chulalongkorn University, could face up to two years in prison if found guilty of illegally accessing computer systems without authorisation.

Thailand’s Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, had her Twitter account hacked last weekend – and her followers saw a stream of messages criticising her leadership.

The hacker’s final tweet read:

“If she can’t even protect her own Twitter account, how can she protect the country?”

In bizarre scenes, Thongdeeworakul appeared before reporters at a hastily convened news conference in Bangkok, alongside ICT Minister Anudith Nakornthap.

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The government has climbed down on plans to ban suspected rioters from using social networking websites in times of civil unrest.

The home secretary, Theresa May, told social networks at a meeting on Thursday that the government had no intention of “restricting internet services”.

Research in Motion (RIM, the maker of BlackBerry), Facebook and Twitter were summoned to the meeting with May after David Cameron signalled a clampdown on the sites following the recent riots in England.

The social networks were poised to face down the government on its plans, which they warned could usher in a new form of online censorship in the UK.

However, government ministers sought to back away from the prime minister’s comments and instead focus on how law enforcement could better use Twitter and Facebook in emergencies.

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