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Saturday, May 25, 2024

Facebook users need to watch out for viruses

Since the last blog post spoke about what privacy meant to millions of Facebook users, this post will let you learn about a few privacy concerns related to Facebook that can prove to be extremely useful to you.

The reasons for being careful with your privacy settings on Facebook are many and varied. Firstly, with millions of users on this social networking site, it has become a really easy target for hackers worldwide. There have been numerous instances where people’s profiles have been hacked and their Facebook profile information has been used against them to access their private and confidential data, such as their bank accounts.

Have you received strange messages from a friend, asking you about irrelevant questions with links embedded in it? If you have, be careful not to ever click on the link. Once a person’s profile has been hacked, any message coming from the user is bound to have some kind of virus in it. I know this because I have seen it happen to many of my friends.

It’s something like this- One fine day you open your Facebook account and you see a friend of yours sent a strange link to 10 others and you. You click on it to view it, and then boom, your profile is infected as well. Don’t be too quick to blame your friend, as he/she doesn’t not know that their profile can send around messages on its own, without requiring any help from the user.

If you or your friend happens to be a victim of such a scenario, be sure to let your friends know as soon as possible as this will help prevent spreading the virus to a few others as well. Also be sure to alert the Facebook team (You need to choose Help on the profile page and then opt for security and report it). After the problem is solved, change your Facebook and e-mail password, to prevent such a situation from occurring again.

Hacking and phishing are becoming quite common on several social networking sites. Trojan worms are by far the most destructive, as they can infect your personal computer really fast, and take complete control over all your online activity.

Now, that you are aware of the worst possible online scenarios concerning Facebook, be sure to read the next blog where you can learn about adjusting your privacy settings in such as way that no one can access your private information.

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