Tech savvy crooks and criminals are increasingly using popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace as tools for their latest phishing schemes.

Cybercrooks realize that popular social networks contain a wealth of personal information contributed by their growing user base.

Over the past 3 years almost 3,200 account hijacking cases on social networks were reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The Internet Crime Complaint Center is a partnership between the FBI; the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Fake profile updates, emails, video and links are used to trick social network users into revealing personal information about themselves on scam sites, including logon IDs and passwords.

Once a person’s social network account is hacked, the criminals can trick their list of friends and repeat the crime on other people. Social networks provide plenty of opportunity to trick more people – the average Facebook user has 120 friends on their list.

The huge growth in social networks has created great tools for cybercriminals. Facebook alone has 300 million registered people.

Cybercriminals are experts at using social engineering to trick people. They can use a friend’s social network profile to trick you into thinking the said person is in trouble and needs financial help, causing some to give out personal and financial information.

A 2005 study from Indiana University showed that as much as 70% of social network phishing scams are successful.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 72,000 complaints about Internet fraud in 2008 that amounted to $264.6 million in financial loss, with each victim losing an average of $931 USD.

Social networks are responding to this new threat.

Facebook has created computer systems that detect phished user accounts. They can recognize and lock user accounts that send an unusually high amount of messages to friends.

MySpace compiles blacklists of phony user accounts to stop people from clicking on phishing links.

Source: CNN

The LinkedIn social network, popular among business people and professionals, has reportedly reached the 50 million member mark.

LinkedIn grew from 45 million registered people in August to 50 million by mid October.

According to recent traffic statistics from comScore , LinkedIn continues to grow consistently in unique visitors.

In September, LinkedIn attracted 9 million unique visitors in the U.S., up from 8.7 million unique visits in August.

However, LinkedIn’s growth is mostly due to increasing international users. LinkedIn grew from 18 million unique visits in July to 20 million unique visits in August – Worldwide.

Half of LinkedIn’s registered users are now international, including 11 million registered users in Europe and 3 million registered users in India. India is now the fastest growing user base for the LinkedIn social network.

Source: LinkedIn.com.

Bloomberg News recently interviewed Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable.com, on social media, web 2.0 and the rising success and profitability of the Mashable brand.

Some facts about Pete Cashmore and Mashable:

- Cashmore founded Mashable.com in 2005 at the age of 19.

- The Mashable blog is focused almost exclusively on Social Networks, Social Media and Web 2.0 news.

- Mashable.com gets over 10 million monthly pageviews.

- Pete Cashmore was named one of the Web’s top 25 celebrities by Forbes in 2009.

- Mashable.com is listed by Technorati as one of the top 10 blogs in the world.

- Mashable was ranked as one of the world’s most profitable blogs by BusinessWeek.

You can view the Pete Cashmore interview by Bloomberg News below:

Online dating site Gelato is fast becoming the Facebook & Twitter of singles sites.

Gelato mixes social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and others with real-time search into it’s online dating site to give people a new way to find a date.

The idea behind Gelato’s social dating 2.0 site is to give people insights into a potential date by allowing them to search for people based on their Facebook updates, Twitter tweets, Flickr pictures etc.

Gelato users simply sign up for an account and connect it to their Facebook or Twitter profiles, then users answer some typical demographic questions common on dating sites like: relationship status, relationship interests, ethnicity, religion, politics etc.

The interesting mix to this new online dating site is users can then link a number of their other social networking and Web 2.0 accounts to Gelato, including: Netflix, Hulu, Flickr, Amazon, Pandora, and Last.fm.

In addition, people can specify public or restricted access to their network activity and updates on Gelato. All of your profile updates on the linked sites will appear in your Gelato “lifestream”. This personal information and potential date bait is then searchable by other Gelato users – as long as you have approved your feeds for public viewing.

Gelato users can then search Gelato for recent profile updates on any topic from entertainment to politics to find a like-minded mate or ( since opposites attract ) someone with totally different views and interests.

However, the only people you will find through a Gelato search will be other Gelato members who have agreed to open their social network updates and Web 2.0 feeds to the public.

If you are comfortable with allowing Gelato’s online dating site access to your Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Hulu updates and feeds and other profile information, then Gelato may be a good option for finding your next date.

A real-time dating and love search. What will they think of next.

You can visit the Gelato online dating site @ ge.la.to

Source:Yahoo.com

Social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are blocked on over half ( 54% ) of corporate networks, according to a recent survey of Chief Information Officers that was conducted by Robert Half Technology.

Furthermore, this 54% represents the percentage of CIOs surveyed who say that their corporations do not allow use of popular social networks by employees for any reason while on the job.

The officers were asked the following question: “Which of the following most closely describes your company’s policy on visiting social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work?”

The CIOs’ responded to the social network question as follows:

- Prohibited completely – 54%
- Permitted for business purposes only – 19%
- Permitted for limited personal use – 16%
- Permitted for any type of personal use – 10%
- Don’t know/no answer – 1%

Source: Robert Half Technology