Triona's Tech Tips

We’ve talked before about Facebook privacy, or lack thereof. Facebook is facing such public scrutiny over privacy, it’s hard to keep up with the number of changes they’ve made. They’ve expounded upon their improvements to news media and set up a page dedicated to privacy. But given the popularity of social networking sites and the multitude of ways they can be exploited to trick unwary users, I expect privacy will remain an issue for some time to come.

Many people believe the illusion of privacy offered by social networking sites. They think they are conversing in a private setting, when in reality that information can easily end up on search engines and other public places. Google and other search engines routinely index data from Facebook and other social networking sites, and data can slip through even if your privacy settings are set to maximum.

Security also remains a concern for Facebook users. Clickjacking–tricking users into clicking links–has become so prevalent on Facebook it’s earned its own term: “likejacking.” A recent worm using link-bait such as “The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School” has infected hundreds of thousands of Facebook users. Clicking the link marks it as “like” to your Facebook friends, giving it unwarranted credibility and helping to spread the worm. Worms like this may also attempt to gain control of your Facebook page or use malicious code to introduce viruses into your computer. Other scams use recent events like the World Cup to entice you into clicking links that purportedly go to video clips. You are then prompted to download software to view the videos, but the downloads are viruses. All those links that claim you will get X number of goodies for Farmville or other games are mostly scams. Criminals may even try to “friend” you from phony accounts so they can target you for burglaries and other crimes.

In other words, social networking sites are about as secure as sieves. What’s a Facebook user to do? My advice is to remember that anything you say on the Internet is public, regardless of your privacy settings. Don’t post information about your children, your vacation plans, or other information than could be used against you. Be wary when clicking on links, and make sure you have a good security suite that is continually updated. And, as always, stay tuned to Tech Tips for the latest computer news.

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Social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are widely used, but they can also take a big chunk out of your day. How can you manage your social media time?

1) Schedule when you’re going to use social media sites, then stick to it. If you limit your time to, say, a half hour every morning or an hour twice a week, you’ll get more out of your time online plus save room for the other things you need to do.

2) Integrate your efforts by using tools that let you send a single post to multiple places. For example, you might use LinkedIn’s Twitter feature to automatically post your LinkedIn status to your Twitter account.

3) Avoid chat, games and other timewasters. Tempting as they are, they cheat you out of productive time. Games in particular can also be venues for viruses. If you must play games, look for those that let you choose when to play, like card games, as opposed to those that penalize you for not using them regularly, like Farmville. And avoid groups that claim you’ll get X number of game goodies if you join–again, most of those are laden with viruses.

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Don’t miss my upcoming seminars on social networking:

Marketing Your Business Through Blogs And Facebook (Beginner)
GLMV Chamber Of Commerce Munch & Learn
Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 12:00pm-1:00pm
GLMV Chamber Office, 1123 S. Milwaukee Ave, Libertyville, Illinois

See below for the advanced session of this class at the GLMV Chamber Best Practices B2B EXPO & Conference on June 23rd.

Discover how to market your business online by leveraging the power of blogs and Facebook. Learn how to set up your Facebook profile or fan page, how to create and maintain a business blog, and how to integrate the two to offer a comprehensive online presence. Computers are not required but you may bring a laptop for hands-on instruction. To register, contact the GLMV Chamber at (847) 680-0750.

Marketing Your Business Through Blogs And Facebook (Advanced)
GLMV Chamber Best Practices B2B EXPO & Conference
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 2:15pm-3:00pm
Doubletree Hotel, 510 East IL Route 83, Mundelein, Illinois

This is a more advanced session and followup to the previous Munch & Learn seminar on June 16th.

Discover how to market your business online by leveraging the power of blogs and Facebook. Learn how to set up your Facebook profile or fan page, how to create and maintain a business blog, and how to integrate the two to offer a comprehensive online presence. Computers are not required but you may bring a laptop for hands-on instruction. To register, contact the GLMV Chamber at (847) 680-0750.

Basic Social Networking
Crystal Lake Chamber Of Commerce Business Builder Breakfast
Friday, July 16, 2010, 8:30am-10:00am
Crystal Lake Chamber, 427 W. Virginia St, Crystal Lake, Illinois

See below for the advanced session of this class.

Have you been asked to get LinkedIn? Can you make contacts through Facebook? Should you Twitter your business? Learn how to use social networking to market your business. We’ll talk about which sites are right for you, how to establish your profile and how to integrate social networking into your marketing strategy. To register, contact the Crystal Lake Chamber at (815) 459-1300.

Advanced Social Networking
Crystal Lake Chamber Of Commerce Business Builder Breakfast
Friday, August 6, 2010, 8:30am-10:00am
Crystal Lake Chamber, 427 W. Virginia St, Crystal Lake, Illinois

See above for the beginner session of this class.

Now that you understand the basics of social networking, let’s delve deeper into how this new technology can help your business. We’ll talk about the advanced features of social networking and how you can use integration tools to save time. To register, contact the Crystal Lake Chamber at (815) 459-1300.

VeriSign iDefense has discovered a hacker selling 1.5 million hacked Facebook profiles for sale on the black market. The profiles are going for $25 for 1,000 profiles with under 10 contacts, and $45 for 1,000 profiles with more than 10 contacts.

Why sell profiles? As you can see from the pricing, it’s all about the contacts. Hacked profiles give criminals the ability to advertise to trusting users. If you get a message from a Facebook friend telling you to click a link, you are more likely to do so than if you get an anonymous spam message in your email. This is what we call spear phishing, targeted campaigns that appear to be from trusted sources. Buy profiles for cheap, trick people into clicking on malicious links or buying junk like rogue antivirus software, and voila! the criminals rake in the profits.

Hacked profiles can also be used to harvest your personal information to crack security questions for juicier targets like your bank accounts. Many people falsely consider Facebook a private environment and post all sorts of information about themselves, their families and their backgrounds. If you post a cute picture of your dog Rover and the security question for your bank is “What is your dog’s name?” you’ve just given away important information.

Likely there are more than 1.5 million Facebook profiles for sale out there. Also for sale are LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, email usernames and passwords, and la creme de la creme, bank accounts and passwords. Even your computer’s processing power can be bought and sold under your nose. It’s a whole underground economy taking advantage of you.

How can you protect yourself? Strong passwords that are unique on every system, good quality security software, and common sense before clicking links. I also encourage you to avoid posting personal information on places like Facebook, be careful of the friend requests you accept, and adjust your privacy settings to maximum. Even so, plenty of people who follow all the rules fall victim. The scams get trickier and more difficult to expose. It’s important to stay educated about computer security, which is why you should subscribe to my free Tech Tips newsletter to keep on top of the latest news.

Next week I’m offering free previews of my Social Networking and Internet Safety For Kids classes with the Cary Park District. The free preview of Social Networking will be held Thursday, February 4th, 2010 from 9:00am-9:30am at the Park District Community Center, 255 Briargate Rd. in Cary, Illinois. The free preview of Internet Safety For Kids will be held Saturday, February 6th, 2010 from 9:00am-9:30am. Registration is not required for these free previews. For more information or to register for the full classes, contact the Cary Park District at (847) 639-6100 or www.carypark.com.

Click here to see the other computer classes I have available. If you are interested in a class but don’t see it here, contact me. With enough interest I can set up additional sessions of any of my classes. I can also work with you one-on-one.

Social Networking
Sponsored by the Cary Park District
Next session TBA

Have you been asked to get LinkedIn? Can you make business contacts through Facebook or MySpace? Should you Twitter your business? Learn the answers to these questions and more. Computers are not required, but you may bring a laptop for hands-on instruction.

Internet Safety For Kids And Tweens (ages 5 years-adult)
Sponsored by the Cary Park District
Monday, February 15, 2010, 9:30am-10:30am

Learn how kids can use the Internet safely by covering age-appropriate skills and talking about online stranger danger. Review basic skills, talk about ways to use technology with less risk and take a quiz to test your knowledge. Parents are welcome to enroll in this program with their kids. Computers are not required, but you may bring a laptop for hands-on instruction.

You’ve bitten the social networking bullet, and now you’re on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Concerned about security? You should be.

Social networking sites are designed to share information, not keep it private. Even with changes such as the much-touted Facebook privacy settings, anything you put on the Internet can potentially be seen.

But this can be to your advantage, especially if you’re marketing your business. News about services or products is information you want to share. Be sure that your posts are timely, concise and above all, relevant. Nobody cares if you had cornflakes for breakfast or that you just put your socks on. The more topical and informative your message, the more followers (and business!) you’ll receive.

I strongly recommend that you avoid posting personal information, no matter what your security settings are. That includes pictures of your children or vacation plans. But by all means, post information that you want disseminated. Why not let the Internet’s viral tendencies work for you?

For more information, join me for my class on Social Networking on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010, from 9:30am-11:30am at the Cary Park District.

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Join me for a free seminar on Social Networking: Marketing Your Business Online, sponsored by the Business Networking Group. The seminar will be held Friday, December 11, 2009 from 7:30am-8:30am at Grandma V’s Restaurant, Routes 176 and 45 in Mundelein, Illinois.

Have you been asked to get LinkedIn? Can you make business contacts through Facebook or MySpace? Should you Twitter your business? We will discuss how these social networking tools can help you develop new referrals and open new markets for your business.

For more information visit the Business Networking Group web site, or see my computer class schedule. Hope to see you there!

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A lot of “Facebook update” scams are going around. These are emails designed to entice you into clicking links to malicious sites, thus divulging your login credentials and possibly infecting your computer with viruses and malware. I received several of these scams in a batch of legitimate Facebook emails, so I thought I’d dissect one for you so you can tell the difference.

The tactics used here are the same as the ones used by the fake Microsoft security bulletins I mentioned before. Again, the idea is to make you think the message is real when you are really being redirected to a bogus and potentially dangerous site.

First, note the use of the Facebook logo, fonts, and colors. The scam message looks almost identical to a real Facebook announcement, down to the mailing address at the bottom of the message. The trick is to mouse over the link WITHOUT clicking on it, and look in the status bar at the address to which you are being directed. In this case you can see you’re being sent, not to facebook.com, but to a scam site that may be waiting to harvest your login credentials or infect your computer.

If you receive a Facebook update, go directly to the Facebook site by typing www.facebook.com in your Web browser. You’ll be able to see your updates there and respond to them.

Remember, these scams are not limited to Facebook. Every social networking site, including LinkedIn, Twitter, and all the rest, are vulnerable to these sorts of tricks.

A final note of caution: Don’t friend anyone on a social networking site unless you’re certain you know who they are. A good rule of thumb is to view their profile to see if you have any friends in common, or to Google the person to see if they’re real. There are fake profiles out there which exist only to friend you and thus have access to your privately-posted information.

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Social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, and MySpace have become wildly popular for both personal and business use. But whether you use Windows or Mac, there are some risks. Social networking sites do not guarantee your safety, so it’s up to you to protect yourself.

Fake profiles are often used to deliver viruses and scareware. They lure you in with a realistic-looking personal profile in order to get you to click links to malicious sites. Don’t accept “friend” invitations unless you actually know the person or can verify who he or she is, and restrict your profile so that only your friends can see it.

Scammers also break into social networking accounts to steal personal information and send spam to your contacts. Use strong passwords (see my PDF tip sheet), encourage your friends to do the same, and check your security protections to make sure they are current and working properly.

Similarly, phishing scams may use information from your social networking profile to send you spam emails. By targeting you with specific information, such emails are harder to detect. Again, use good security practices and practice your anti-phishing skills with tests like this one from SonicWall.

Fake advertising, or malvertizing, uses realistic-looking ads to get you to click on sites that will infect you with viruses. These ads are often served by third parties and not necessarily by the social networking site. We’ve seen this before where news sites are infected with bad ads. Be wary of any advertisement offered to you, even if it’s on a legitimate site.

Real-life criminals are also using social networking sites to their advantage. Burglars are using them to find out more about who you are and where you live, and even when you’ll be on vacation. Be cautious about sharing pictures or information about yourself and your family online.

Another way to avoid problems is to expand short addresses before clicking. Twitter users often abbreviate using services like tinyurl.com or bit.ly, but such abbreviations can hide malicious sites. Use a program like ExpandMyURL or UnTiny to expand those abbreviations, plus McAfee SiteAdvisor or LinkExtend for Firefox to check out the expanded sites before you click on them.

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