Social Media's Growing use for Cyber Crime

The FBI recently issued a report pointing to the growing use if Social Networks for criminal purposes. The report points to the traditional techniques of Phishing and Data Mining of Social Media sites as continuing serious problems. The report also points to the use of false persons being used to attract honest site users and therefore gain access to information that could be sensitive. Examples are setting up phony Facebook accounts to attract military personnel and then extract information they might have or information about their location.

Of course, corporate information could be at risk in such scams, and it is important for companies to have tightly drawn policies on the use of social media by their employees. One of the difficulties in such policies is that a company cannot interfere in the personal life of their employees, yet they can be duped through their personal activities into revealing sensitive information. A clear demarcation between business and personal use of social media is nevertheless a critical element of a security policy.

For more on the FBI report, see this link.