WebProNews » F-Secure

Majority Of Facebook Users Don

Mike Sachoff — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:44:45 +0000

A majority of Facebook users say they connect to the social networking site from work, but 73 percent have not "friended" their boss, according to a new report from F-Secure.

More than half (58%) of Facebook users said they visit the site at least occasionally at work and 77 percent report they actively use the privacy settings on the site.

"We’re finding that Facebook users are more privacy savvy than some experts assume," said Sean Sullivan, F-Secure Security Advisor.

"As Facebook moves to make more and more information public, its users seem to be increasingly aware that their privacy control is at stake."

More than a third (35%) of Facebook users said they have posted something on the site they later regretted.

In addition, Facebook users are careful about backing up photos they post on the site. Seventy percent said they have backups of at least some of the photos they’ve shared, compared to 56 percent of computer users who stored or backed up their digital photos in a 2009 survey by F-Secure.

"Facebook is a free service," Sullivan says, "but we ‘pay’ by viewing advertising and making our lives into content that can be searched, shared and monetized."

"Users are willing to make a bargain, but they are also demanding Facebook for more control over what they share and with whom."

Majority Of Facebook Users Don

Mike Sachoff — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:44:45 +0000

A majority of Facebook users say they connect to the social networking site from work, but 73 percent have not "friended" their boss, according to a new report from F-Secure.

More than half (58%) of Facebook users said they visit the site at least occasionally at work and 77 percent report they actively use the privacy settings on the site.

"We’re finding that Facebook users are more privacy savvy than some experts assume," said Sean Sullivan, F-Secure Security Advisor.

"As Facebook moves to make more and more information public, its users seem to be increasingly aware that their privacy control is at stake."

More than a third (35%) of Facebook users said they have posted something on the site they later regretted.

"Facebook is a free service," Sullivan says, "but we ‘pay’ by viewing advertising and making our lives into content that can be searched, shared and monetized."

"Users are willing to make a bargain, but they are also demanding Facebook for more control over what they share and with whom."

Majority Of Facebook Users Don

Mike Sachoff — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:44:45 +0000

A majority of Facebook users say they connect to the social networking site from work, but 73 percent have not "friended" their boss, according to a new report from F-Secure.

More than half (58%) of Facebook users said they visit the site at least occasionally at work and 77 percent report they actively use the privacy settings on the site.

"We’re finding that Facebook users are more privacy savvy than some experts assume," said Sean Sullivan, F-Secure Security Advisor.

"As Facebook moves to make more and more information public, its users seem to be increasingly aware that their privacy control is at stake."

More than a third (35%) of Facebook users said they have posted something on the site they later regretted.

"Facebook is a free service," Sullivan says, "but we ‘pay’ by viewing advertising and making our lives into content that can be searched, shared and monetized."

"Users are willing to make a bargain, but they are also demanding Facebook for more control over what they share and with whom."

Majority Of Facebook Users Don

Mike Sachoff — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:44:45 +0000

A majority of Facebook users say they connect to the social networking site from work, but 73 percent have not "friended" their boss, according to a new report from F-Secure.

More than half (58%) of Facebook users said they visit the site at least occasionally at work and 77 percent report they actively use the privacy settings on the site.

"We’re finding that Facebook users are more privacy savvy than some experts assume," said Sean Sullivan, F-Secure Security Advisor.

"As Facebook moves to make more and more information public, its users seem to be increasingly aware that their privacy control is at stake."

More than a third (35%) of Facebook users said they have posted something on the site they later regretted.

"Facebook is a free service," Sullivan says, "but we ‘pay’ by viewing advertising and making our lives into content that can be searched, shared and monetized."

"Users are willing to make a bargain, but they are also demanding Facebook for more control over what they share and with whom."

Google Partners with NSA on Cyber Attack Analysis

Chris Crum — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:41:32 +0000

Update 4: Google has reportedly now teamed up with the National Security Agency to analyze the attack and try to better defend against such attacks in the future.

Update 3: The Chinese government has reportedly denied that it had any involvement in the much publicized cyber attacks against Google and other companies. AFP provides the following quotes:

The "accusation that the Chinese government participated in (any) cyberattack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China," an unnamed spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told state news agency Xinhua.

"We are firmly opposed to that," the spokesman said…

"We urge the United States to respect facts and stop using the so-called Internet freedom issue to criticise China unreasonably," said foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.

Update 2: The Chinese government has reportedly spoken up regarding Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech, regarding China and Google.

CNN quotes a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying, ""We’re firmly against this statement that goes against truth and damages U.S.-Sino relationship," adding that the Chinese government views the Google case as a "business dispute" that shouldn’t affect relationships between the U.S. and Chinese governments.

Update: In a speech today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called upon China to investigate the attacks on Google and the State Department will reportedly file "a formal protest over the complaints."

Original Article: Google may try to continue with operations in China, even if it shuts its search engine down due to censorship. You must remember that Google is much, much more than just a search engine, and the censoring search results doesn’t necessarily come into play in all other aspects of its business.

According to the New York Times, Google will be holding talks with Chinese government officials soon, which will likely determine the fate of Google’s operations in the country, and to what (if any) extent those operations will continue to exist.

"In most countries, Google draws the majority of its revenue from ads that appear on its search engine, but the No. 1 source of revenue in China comes from ads that Chinese companies place on Google’s sites in the United States," reports Miguel Helft with the Times. "A person knowledgeable about Google’s business in China said ads that run on a network of Chinese Web sites are the company’s second-largest source of revenue in the country. Google can retain both of those if it is allowed to keep a sales force and advertising network there."

The question is, is the Google China situation going to be an all or nothing scenario? We will probably know soon enough if said talks get underway (according to the Times they will be in the coming days and weeks).

On a related note, the Wall Street Journal has spotted that Google is showing ads on search results related to the situation that point to the company’s official blog post that announced its decision to stop censoring search results in China. I guess that’s the best way to make sure the true source turns up no matter what combination of related keywords are used to search for information on the matter (I wonder what that says about the SEO vs PPC debate)?

On yet another related note, security Vendor F-Secure says that the cyber attacks that kicked this whole thing into motion are now targeting United States defense contractors ( Via NetworkWorld). The firm says malicious PDFs under the guise of official Department of Defense documents were sent to them.

Related Articles:

> China Responds To Google Situation

> Baidu’s Stock Soars Following China News

> Google May Quit China

Twitter Quietly Takes Step Toward Security

Chris Crum — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:54:53 +0000

Security firm F-Secure discovered that Twitter has begun blocking links to malicious sites when users try to post them. Twitter has not acknowledged this with an announcement yet, but users (at least some) are getting the following message when trying to post a link to a known malware site:

"Oops! Your tweet contained a URL to a known malware site!"

Twitter and security are have certainly not been known to be synonymous. WebProNews has reported a various Twitter-related security flaws in the past. We interviewed Amit Klein, CTO of Trusteer, who discussed Twitter account hijacking, among other issues. Then there is the whole email spam issue. Recently, even Twitter’s own internal documents were hacked.

The blocking of malicious URLs shows that the company is not ignoring security concerns though. Although, it is odd that they have not addressed this in a blog post or anything.

Tameka Kee at PaidContent points out that Twitter has improved on the security front:

The new feature has surfaced (coincidentally) just a day after the annual Defcon hacker conference. Twitter was a resident on the Defcon “Wall of Sheep,” which shows a stream of passwords and login info from people that have unwittingly exposed their data over various networks (per Forbes); the startup got a better security grade this year than last year—but hackers still said Twitter could be doing more to protect its users.

Users need to be careful. You should probably not click links from sources you are not familiar with and don’t trust. While Twitter is blocking malicious URLs, that doesn’t mean they’re catching all of them.

F-Secure Tweaks Google Over Hosting Ads

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:27:02 +0000

Bulletproof hosting usually refers to ISPs that give spammers a safe haven where other ISPs would likely shut down their activities.

F-Secure Tweaks Google Over Hosting Ads

Advertising of bulk marketing products is not permitted if the stated or implied use of the following products is unsolicited spam: • Email lists that are not opt-in • Bulk email software • Bulk messaging
— from the Google AdWords terms of service

Google presents what appear to be straightforward rules on what they don’t want to see in their cash cow AdWords product. Security firm F-Secure found the reality a little different than what Google suggests.

Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure found ads for bulletproof hosting appearing in the One Box, a prime ad placement location atop a Google search results page.

“No, this can’t be true

F-Secure Puzzled Over Google Results

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:43:33 +0000

What is it about the numeric sequence 13123390 that has Finnish security firm F-Secure so curious about Google’s search results for it?

Their first blog post about the number appeared on Monday:

Make a Google search for "13123390".

How many results do you get?

Are you sure?

Explain what’s happening.

It looks like F-Secure and some other people saw some weird result pages, with ‘Results: 1-10 of about 5 for 13123390′ going on for five pages. But it appears most people are seeing normal results.

We’re seeing ‘Results 41 – 45 of about 31 for 13123390′, with the option of seeing omitted duplicate results. We opted to see them: ‘Results 71 – 71 of about 31 for 13123390.’

We guessed 31 represented the most pure results Google’s algorithm can give for the particular query. The others come from the supplemental index. But in taking a minute to count supplemental and non-supplemental results, we found 36 out of the 71 were labeled as supplemental.

Google does not show exact counts, in order to keep their search from being too useful to people who might try to game the system. Only recently did Google start showing webmasters more accurate information about keyphrase links to their sites from the search index.

That could be what Mikko and company at F-Secure are seeing with their query. Just some good old Google weirdness. F-Secure has followup posts with guesses from their audience about these search results too.