This is a must read from “USA Today” (Thursday, March 4, 2010):   “How cybercriminals invade social networks, companies” by Byron Acohido

Read it  if you have anything valuable on your computers….intellectual property, customer lists, patents, strategic documents, passwords, birthdates, hometowns, etc.

It starts with:  “Hey Alice, look at the pics I took of us last weekend at the picnic. Bob”  Alice clicks on the link, ‘attackers” take control of her Facebook account and her company laptop, allowing access into the financial firm’s network.  All from a friendly click. 

Read to understand the situation and how widespread it is.

A few safety tips are included from Twitter and Facebook such as:  “If you receive a message with a phrase like “This you??” or “LOL is this you” followed by a link, do not click through; there’s a phishing site on the other side.”

Acohido says:  “Meanwhile, discussions about restricting workplace use of social networks and training employees to be more circumspect are just beginning to percolate at venues like the big tech security trade show here this week sponsored by RSA, the security division of EMC. “Most larger businesses simply ask employees to watch their time spent on social-networking sites,” Ollmann says.

Below is a link to the entire article.  Read it and then come back and tell me… what do you do, what will you do to protect valuable business and person information?

Link to:  Byron Acohido’s, ” How cybercriminals invade social networks, companies” 

Another good article by Byron Achohido:  Trove of 68,000 stolen logons in hands of ‘amateur’ hackers by Byron Acohido