Social Networking & Security: Facebook - Literature review Example

 Literature review: Social Networking & Security-Facebook Introduction Social networks have opened another channel of communication for the people from different parts of world with the help of internet. Even though, many other traditional media like the print media and audiovisual media are currently operating in the world, none of them can beat internet related communication channels. One of the major characteristics of communication through social networking is the interactive element and the instant communication facilities present in social networks. People can express their views and opinions through social networks and they can collect the responses instantly from their friends and relatives through social network media. Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, Cyworld, Twitter, Orkut etc are some of the popular social networks currently operating all over the world with the help of internet. One of the major advantages of internet related communication channels is the wide reach- ability. No other communication media is capable of reaching the farthest corners of earth like the internet. According to Shih (2009), “right this moment at least 150000000 people are interacting with friends and talking about the brands on facebook”(Shih, 2009, p.i). Data from Forrester Research (2007) showed that “about 2/3rds of all North American youths use social networks daily, and about 1/3rd of NA adults use it as least once a month” (What makes a Successful Marketing Campaign on Social Networks?, 2008). The above statistics clearly underline the value and popularity of social networks in the current world. At the same time, social networks have raised many challenges also. Like many other revolutionary products or inventions, social networks are also facing security and misuse related problems. The information exchanged through social networks is not safe and anybody can misuse it for personal gains. This paper reviews the literature available to learn more about the security related threats raised by social networks taking facebook as the major example. Literature review: Social Networking & Security-Facebook Marshable (2010) has mentioned some facts about the history of facebook, one of the most popular social networking sites, in his article Facebook – The Complete Biography. “Facebook was founded in 2004 by a former-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg”. He has also pointed out that “facebook and its idea spread across the college campus within months from launching and at present it is the second largest social networking site, second only to my space as far as traffic is concerned” (Marshable, 2010). Before the introduction of social networks, we often heard about topics like alcohol addiction, drug addiction, smoking addiction etc. Social networks added one more addiction topics to the above list. Currently, in almost the entire countries social networks are gaining grounds because of the convenience it provided to the interaction between people. The increasing popularity of social networks brought many advantages in communication; but it brought many security related challenges also. Harris (2009) has blamed the increased number of third party software applications present in facebook for its vulnerability to security related issues. He has mentioned that “facebook relies on third party Java applications, so that the user is not only entrusting Facebook with her/his login and password but also must trust the third-party applications that provide tools for Facebook users”. It is quite possible that the codes used on the site are malicious or direct the users to insecure sites containing malicious code. He has also blamed the facebook policy of allowing computer programmers to work on facebook platform. “Facebook also allows computer programmers free access to the Facebook platform in May of 2007 which is another major point of concern” (Harris, 2009). In order to increase traffic facebook has provided lot of facilities to the users and majority of such facilities were developed by third party software application providers. These people may have their own interests and they can easily manipulate the information provided by the facebook users while users using their applications in facebook. In short, facebook contains lot of third party applications and along with facebook the users should trust these third party application providers also. Even skilled computer programmers are free to make use of facebook platforms to create their own programs or packages. It is not necessary that all these facebook programmers may handle the private information of the users safely. Kelleher, (2009) has cited the reasons for the increased attraction of hackers towards social networking sites. In his opinion, “hackers are attracted to social networking sites because they see the potential to commit fraud and launch spam and malware attacks”. He has blamed the increased amount of applications for the increased security risks associated with facebook. “There are more than 50,000 applications available for Facebook and these third-party applications may not all be safe. Some have the potential to be used to infect computers with malicious code, which in turn can be used to collect data from that user’s site”. Another concern expressed by Kelleher was about the messaging. “Messaging on social networking sites is a concern and the Koobface worm is just one example of how messages are used to spread malicious code and worms” (Kelleher, 2009) Andrew Hough (2010) has written on Telegraph UK that facebook is currently working on solving their security problems. He has pointed out that “anonymous users bombard victims with offensive messages or abuse with the help of stories of Cumbria shootings victims and soldiers who died in Afghanistan which resulted in some teenagers committing suicide” (Hough, 2010). Teenagers are the major facebook users. Teenage community doesn’t know much about the tactics used by antisocial elements to create problems. It is difficult for them to segregate between the good and evil. When some fabricated stories or photographs appeared on social security websites like facebook, they will entrust the whole contents and may react emotionally. For example, the recent 9/11 World trade centre attack created lot of panic among the Americans. Even the sounds produced by normal passenger aircrafts created suspicion in the minds of Americans for few more weeks after the 9/11 incident. Thus stories about terrorist attacks, wars, massacres etc can generate psychological problems among people and antisocial elements can capitalize on that. Prinya Hom-anek (n. d) has pointed out the security threats caused to an organization while its employees use social security networks. In his opinion, while using social networks with the help of a company computer at the workplace, “on one hand, there are the diseases of data leakage and breached privacy, but on the other, disciplinary action for using social networking applications can lead to problems of system attacks within an organization” Hom-anek (n. d). Some of the employees in an organization may have the habit of using the office computers for chatting with friends and relatives through social networks. Such tactics are dangerous both to the employees and the organization. If the organization came to know about such tactics of its employees, it may take disciplinary action against them. Most importantly, these practices may result in the leakage of secret company information. The employee may not have false intentions, but the person at the other end can easily collect information about the stored documents related to a new product, the company is going to develop, in the computer. Suppose the company wants to avoid disclosing the details about the product from the competitors. In such cases, the competitors can establish friendship through social networks with some of the employees of the rival organization and they can download information about the secret product easily. Even the friend on the other end may not know the person at the other end may have bad intentions and he is silently downloading sensitive information from his company computer. Kretkowski (2007) has cited the strength of social networks as the major threat to the security of the social networks. He has pointed out that the open interaction encouraged among the users as the major strength and weakness at the same time. He has argued that the barriers maintained in normal face to face interactions are practically impossible in communication through social networks and hence excessive blabbing and unwanted gossip may occur. He has also mentioned that the competitors can easily collect information about an organization and its plans with the help of interactions through social networks (Kretkowski 2007). Collins (2008) also expressed similar concerns. When it comes to privacy and security issues on social networks, security issues and privacy issues are entirely two different beasts. A security issue occurs when a hacker gains unauthorized access to a site's protected coding or written language. Privacy issues, those involving the unwarranted access of private information, don't necessarily have to involve security breaches. Someone can gain access to confidential information by simply watching you type your password. But both types of breaches are often intertwined on social networks, especially since anyone who breaches a site's security network opens the door to easy access to private information belonging to any user. But the potential harm to an individual user really boils down to how much a user engages in a social networking site, as well as the amount of information they're willing to share. In other words, the Facebook user with 900 friends and 60 group memberships is a lot more likely to be harmed by a breach than someone who barely uses the site (Collins, 2008). There are many social network users who exchange even private and confidential information through their social networks. These people may have strong belief in their friends’ ability to keep their private information secret. Their belief might be true also. But such people forget about the fact that hackers can easily break the firewalls provided by the social networks and they can easily collect all the private and confidential information exchanged through social networks. For example, consider a teenage boy has given his credit card information to his girl friend through the social networks when she was in need of some money. Hackers can easily collect these information and rob the money from the boy’s bank account. Some people have the habit of exchanging their usernames and passwords related to sensitive and highly confidential information such as bank accounts. It is not necessary that only their friends were able to access these information while they supplying it through social networking sites. The safety of the information exchanged through social networks depends on the time spent and the safety measures taken. Most of the people spend lengthy hours in front of the computer chatting with their friends and relatives through social networks which help the hackers to collect all information they needed to break the firewalls. Social networks are utilized by product manufacturers to market their products. Pornography is one of the major businesses in internet and the antisocial elements put their ads in social networks inviting the users to visit their sites. As most of the social network users are teenagers, many of them will be attracted by such ads and visit those sites. These pornography sites will plant some spyware software in the visitor’s computers in order to collect private and sensitive information. Most of the social network users have the habit of uploading and exchanging their photographs through social networks. These photographs can also be misused for making money. For example, if a pornography dealer in internet comes across with the photographs or video footage of a beautiful girl, he can manipulate that photograph or video stream to make sex photograph or movie. No social networks seem to be free from the threat of pornography. A parent has written on blogsafety.com on May 2, 2009, complaining about his daughter’s behaviour of “looking at pornography and communicating with a pornographer on Facebook”. He thought Facebook was more or less free from pornography (Porn on facebook, 2009). Jayashankar (2007) was also expressed similar concerns about the spreading of pornographic materials through facebook like social networks. In his opinion, “like any other aspect of the Internet, social networking sites suffer from the pervasiveness of pornography”. He has also pointed out that “many of the invitations from "friends" are actually thinly-disguised porn sites that solicit MySpace and Facebook users to join up using their credit cards” (Jayashankar, 2007). Another major drawback of social networks is the misinterpretation of the information provided. Former, UN diplomat and Indian minister of foreign affairs, Shashi Tharoor has recently faced severe problems with respect to one of his controversial comments through Twitter which finally led to his resignation from the cabinet. He was accused of ridiculing the Congress party leaders in India through his tweets in twitter. “Shashi Tharoor described economy class as cattle class and the congress party as holy cow in his tweets” (Shashi Tharoor: The Controversy Guru, 2010). Even though Mr. Tharoor has explained many times that he had no intention to ridicule the congress party or the leaders and his tweets were misinterpreted, the controversies were not ended till the Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh interfered in the matter and advised the congress men to take it as a joke. In short, innocent comments made through social networks can generate unnecessary controversies and unwanted results. Hunt (2009) has argued that “people are on social networks to connect and build relationships. Relationships and connections over time lead to trust, which is the key to form social capital” (Hunt, 2009, p.2). It is quite possible that an American employee working in the defence sector might found a Chinese friend through social networks like facebook. If they strengthen their relationships, sometimes the Chinese friend might be able to collect sensitive information about the American defence sector programs through his chatting with the American friend. It is not necessary that the American might reveal all the defence secrets to the Chinese friend. The Chinese fellow can easily access the information stored in his friend’s computer using better technologies. Many people believe that China is already engaged in a cyber battle with the Americans and social networking sites are helping the Chinese espionage in one way or other. Brenner (2009) in his article Slapped in the Facebook: Social Networking Dangers Exposed, has quoted the opinions of two expert security researchers; Nathan Hamiel and Shawn Moyer. In Moyer’s opinion, social networking sites are meant to get as many users in one place as possible on one platform, and for attackers there's a lot of return-on-investment in going after them," whereas Hamiel noted that the trouble begins with so much creative power being put in the hands of those who have little or no tech savvy. Any application can be used to attack other applications and an application can be used to view your entire file if the privacy settings are off. Even if you put the privacy settings in place, you should assume you are screwed (Brenner, 2009) The major drawbacks of social networks are the lack of control over the information exchanged through it because of the increased traffic. Millions of people are interacting in social networking sites and censoring of the data exchanged through these sites is a huge task. In short, social networks are just like nuclear energy. If used with positive intentions, we can use nuclear energy to solve our energy crisis. If used with negative intentions, same nuclear energy can be used to destroy the whole world. Same way social networks can be used for positive and negative purposes. References 1. Brenner, B. (2009), Slapped in the Facebook: Social Networking Dangers Exposed, [Online], Available at: http://www.csoonline.com/article/479824/slapped-in-the-facebook-social-networking-dangers-exposed, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 2. Collins, B (2008), Privacy and Security Issues in Social Networking, [Online], Available at: http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/10/social-networking-security.html, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 3. Harris, S. (2009), Security Issues of Social Network Sites, , [Online], Available at: http://cisspblog.logicalsecurity.com/2009/02/16/security-issues-of-social-network-sites/, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 4. Hough, A. (2010), Facebook vows new security measures to combat alarming 'trolling' abuse trend, [Online], Available at: telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7939721/Facebook-vows-new-security-measures-to-combat-alarming-trolling-abuse-trend.html, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 5. Hom-anek, P. (n. d), Social-network security problems, [Online], Available at: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/08/10/technology/Social-network-security-problems-30135566.html, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 6. Hunt,T. (2009). The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business. Publisher: Crown Business (April 21, 2009) 7. Jayashankar, (2007), Social Networking and the Problems of Facebook and MySpace. [Online], Available at: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/456335/social_networking_and_the_problems_pg2.html?cat=15, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 8. Kretkowski, P.D. (2007), Social Network Security Hazards, [Online], Available at: http://www.itsecurity.com/features/social-network-security-hazards-072507/, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 9. Kelleher, D. (2009). 5 Problems with Social Networking in the Workplace, [Online], Available at: http://www.information-management.com/specialreports/2009_165/social_networking_media-10016208-1.html, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 10. Marshable,( 2010), Facebook – The Complete Biography, [Online], Available at: http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 11. Porn on facebook, (2009), [Online], Available at: http://www.blogsafety.com/topic/Sexting-Cyberbullying-And/Porn-On-Facebook/1200000731, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 12. Shashi Tharoor : The Controversy Guru (2010), [Online], Available at: http://abhisays.com/politics/shashi-tharoor-the-controversy-guru.html, [Accessed 12 August 2010] 13. Shih C. (2009),The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff, Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (March 22, 2009) 14. What makes a Successful Marketing Campaign on Social Networks? (2008), [Online], Available at: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/02/19/what-makes-a-marketing-campaign-on-social-networks-successful/, [Accessed 12 August 2010] Read More