Security Tips for Social Netizens

I’ll admit that I was taken in the first time I got a tweet like this:

“You gotta see this! lololĀ bit.ly/ZUT…..

I haven’t been fooled since, but I’m sure plenty of people are fooled every day, particularly when the come-on is from a person they know.

The difference between the Nigerian princess plea, the PayPal password reset email and other famous online security scams we know and love is that social networks make it appear as if the requests are coming from your friends. How can you not stop to help out a friend who’s marooned in an overseas village somewhere after his wallet and passport were stolen?

Digital Defense,a security assessment and software firm, has published this free guide to the most common security dangers in social media. While experienced netizens know that you never click on a link without first checking out the URL, for the vast majority of casual users don’t know how to do that (hint: hover over the link). This free download is worth sharing with the people you work with, and any IT organization should make it required reading for users.

Note, you have to fill out a registration form to download it, but the company doesn’t ask for much. Also, I received no compensation for this post.

 

2 thoughts on “Security Tips for Social Netizens

  1. Great Tip Paul! I will share this with my banker friends who are always on the lookout for ways to help their customers/members be wary. Another favorite of mine is the tweet, “have you seen this humiliating picture of you?” along with a link! I wonder how many have fallen for that one.

  2. As Denise mentions above, the “humiliating picture” one still seems to hit my DM box on a regular basis. Isn’t there anything twitter themselves can do to filter out tweets and direct messages that are 99.999% sure to be scam links of some kind?

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