Facebook is no new word for any of us. It has changed, the very way we interact with our friends, family and colleagues, by facilitating sharing and ease of use. With more than 900 million users and still growing, Facebook has become a seemingly irreplaceable part of everyone’s online experience, is precisely why, Facebook vulnerabilities and scams, hurt most of us.

The wealth of interaction, users and information, on Facebook makes it a lucrative target for attackers. Hence attackers are finding interesting ways, to plant vulnerabilities over Facebook, in order to meet their motives – most of these methods are inconspicuous to Facebook’s millions of common users. Let us look at a few through this blog.

To start with, we have one of the commonly spotted issues of hacked accounts, by an individual hacker or hacker groups. Accounts once hacked, are used as a platform to spread spam, or are sold – there are hacker groups transacting online, who offer Facebook IDs and account information, in exchange of money. Hackers generally use one of several available hacking patterns or commonly used usernames or account information, to hack an account.

Profile Cloning is another method, in which insecure information from a current account is duped and used to create an identical account. Using this new account the attacker sends friend requests to victim’s friends and once approved, the attacker has entry to the target’s private information, which he can use to replicate and create many more dummy accounts, or issue scams.

‘Clickjacking’ has been haunting many Facebook users in recent times, wherein users account is hacked using a popular video or article. Once the person clicks on bait (which is either a video or link to other pages), the program posts some spam content to the individual’s friend’s wall, using the victim’s account, without their knowledge.

These are just a few ways an attacker can harm or use your Facebook account, but many more like Phishing, Commandeering Accounts, Cross-Platform Profile Cloning, Fake Facebook, Affinity Fraud, Mining Unprotected Info, and so on exist.

Be on a safer side, by using safety measures like regularly updating your privacy policies, keeping a check on what you are sharing and safe surfing methods like using Facebook with HTTPS.

Kids are more prone to such harmful attacks as they are unaware of darker side of social networking sites. Parents can schedule kids’ time to access Facebook and other websites and protect them from unknown Internet perils with Cyberoam NetGenie’s advanced, age-wise Parental Controls and host of other features. Visit www.netgenie.net for further details.