Facebook no longer a safe haven as cybercrime spreads

Lisa Severens, a clinical trials manager from Worcester, Massachusetts, learned the hard way. A virus took control of her laptop and started sending pornographic photos to colleagues.

“I was mortified about having to deal with it at work,” said Severens, whose employer had to replace her computer because the malicious software could not be removed.

Cybercrime, which costs U.S. companies and individuals billions a year, is spreading fast on Facebook because such scams target and exploit those naive to the dark side of social networking, security experts say.

While News Corp's MySpace was the most-popular hangout for cyber criminals two years ago, experts say hackers are now entrenched on Facebook, whose membership has soared from 120 million in December to more than 200 million today.

“Facebook is the social network du jour. Attackers go where the people go. Always,” said Mary Landesman, a senior researcher at Web security company ScanSafe.

Scammers break into accounts posing as friends of users, sending spam that directs them to websites that steal personal information and spread viruses. Hackers tend to take control of infected PCs for identity theft, spamming and other mischief.

Facebook manages security from its central headquarters in Palo Alto, California, screening out much of the spam and malicious software targeting its users. That should make it a safer place to surf than the broader Internet, but criminals are relentless and some break through Facebook's considerable filter.

The rise in attacks reflects Facebook's massive growth. Company spokesman Simon Axten said that as the number of users has increased, the percentage of successful attacks has stayed about the same, remaining at less than 1 percent of members over the past five years.

By comparison, he said, FBI data show that about 3 percent of U.S. households were burglarized in 2005.

“Security is an arms race, and we're always updating these systems and building new ones to respond to new and evolving threats,” Axten said.

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