Social Networks Pose Security Threats (& An Intro to Tina Fey’s YouFace)
It’s no surprise to our community that social networks have the potential to pose big security threats this year. During the “Battle of the Social Networks,” uTesters found a combined 718 bugs in Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn; and an additional 300+ bugs were discovered in the top five Twitter desktop apps during the Q2 bug battle.
To add more fuel to the fire, today the company Sophos, which surveyed 500+ organizations, came out with a new report stating that in the past year:
- 57% of users report they have been spammed via social networking sites
- 36% of users claim they’ve been sent malware via social networking sites
- 72% of survey respondents think social networks are a danger for their companies (see Mashable article)
What’s the solution? Tina Fey, in her show “30 Rock,” recently spoofed social networks with her creation of “YouFace” (combo of Facebook & MySpace). Terms such as “finger-tagged,” “weirdsie,” and “pho-lo” (for photo and hello) had many ROFL. See video clip after the bump!
But let’s be serious for a moment. Are these sites glorified chat rooms (as Alec Baldwin would have us believe)? Or have they become so critical to communicating with the media, customers, partners, prospects and investors, that blocking them would be catastrophic to your business?
Although the former makes for a great show, I have to side with the latter. So, can we keep our community-centric apps without posing security threats to our companies?
