According to Cnet.com, security firm Sophos has highlighted yet another scam that’s zipping around Facebook in the form of a third-party application, this one spreading in the form of links claiming to be from friends that encourage members to install a Facebook “dislike button.”

Sophos wrote about the scam in a post on Monday,  pointing out that a link to it tends to appear in wall posts that appear to be from the user’s friends (“I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!”) but which are actually automated messages from friends who have already been duped. The scam’s purpose is to force users to complete a survey contained in the application, a bit of trickery that has already been known to be perpetuated through scam links like “Justin Bieber trying to flirt” and “Anaconda coughs up a hippo,” the two of which presumably would be enticing to rather different demographics of Facebook users.

As Facebook’s surging membership numbers have blazed past 500 million around the world, its channels of fast social connection and messaging have become a prime target for scammers and viruses.This one’s particularly nasty because a “dislike button,” offering some kind of counterpoint to Facebook’s own “like” button is something that many members have been clamoring for.

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Are you as protective of your kids as I am of mine?

My wife and two highly-spirited daughters are more than just the center of my universe – they are the compass by which I set my course in every aspect of life. If something is not good for the family, then it isn’t good for me. And that means that I want to do everything in my power to keep them safe.

You and I are called on to protect our children from many things, starting in the womb. Even before they are born, we practice good preventative care. We take specially designed pre-natal exercise classes, coax ourselves to eat right for their benefit, learn CPR and Love and Logic and screen regularly for signs of trouble. Once they are born, we provide the best nourishment, the finest medical care, ample playtime, rest and an infinite flow of unconditional love. You get the point… we do everything in our power to prevent complications and to give them the best chance to grow up healthy, happy and in harmony with the world around them. That is our responsibility, our purpose and our joy.

But how often do you check their credit report? Their WHAT?! I can feel the surprise in your blank stare. I can hear your questions:

By Guest Blogger, Mike Spinney, The Ponemon Institute

I grow more and more convinced that, while the issues that keep us busy generate headlines that have migrated from the legal journals and trade publications into the mainstream media, the basic need for education among consumers becomes more urgent.  Lately the Wall Street Journal has published a steady stream of insightful articles related to digital privacy, and data breaches are reported in local newspapers wherever and whenever they occur, but in my experience talking with regular folks, the lessons contained in these articles don’t seem to be having any meaningful effect.

Whenever I’ve had the privilege of standing before an audience of regular folks, the questions I hear over and over again are related to information so basic that in my professional interactions they don’t even come up.  “Is it safe to send a check through the mail?”  “Should I pay with cash, credit, or debit?”  “How can I tell the difference between a fake email and a legitimate one?”

I’ve heard a lot of people scoff at the simplicity of these questions.  Surely we’ve moved well beyond the question of spam and phishing, right?  We’ve got bigger questions to address today, like HIPAA and HITECH; like RFID and biometrics; like behaviorally targeted advertising; like Mass 201 CMR 17…

The following is an excerpt from John’s latest book Privacy Means Profit. To learn more and to purchase the book, visit our website www.ThinkLikeASpy.com.

For businesses, shredding is low-hanging fruit (one of the easiest sources of data breach to eliminate). But businesses are so often focused on electronic forms of data breach that they fail to heed the following statistics highlighted in a recent Ponemon Institute study conducted for the Alliance for Secure Business Information:

• More than 50 percent of sensitive business data is still stored on paper documents.
• Forty-nine percent of data breaches reported in the survey were the result of paper documents.
• Sixty percent of businesses admitted that they didn’t provide the proper tools (e.g., shredders) to safely discard documents that were no longer needed.
• The average data breach recovery cost according to this survey was $6.3 million.

If you own a business, make sure to destroy sensitive documents prior to discarding them, to decrease your legal liability. Businesses are required to destroy all consumer information before discarding it in the trash. The Fair & Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA) Disposal Rule states that ‘‘any person who maintains or otherwise possesses consumer information for a business purpose’’ must properly destroy the information prior to disposal. FACTA further states that every person and/or business must take ‘‘reasonable measures’’ to protect against unauthorized access to the use of the information in connection with its disposal… Click Here to Continue.

When you are ‘friends’ with people on Facebook that you are not actually friends with, how do you know whether they have good intentions?

A recent segment on CNN discusses the risks that you may be taking while updating your Facebook status. You don’t know who is looking at your private information because it’s really not private – it’s public. Keri McMullen found this out the hard way after she posted a simple status message that she was going to see a band with her fiance. It only took the burglars calling the venue to find out what time the show was starting to know when they could break into her home. The burglars showed up 35 minutes after the McMullens left for the concert.

It is that simple. You post a casual message to your “friends” that could turn into a nightmare where, like Keri, you lose upwards of $11,000 in personal property. They were lucky that they had cameras installed in the home and were able to catch the perpetrators on film. After posting pictures of them on her Facebook page (a good use of social networking), another friend recognized the intruders as Keri’s high school classmate.

Facebook has the Population of the Third Largest Country

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 marked a big day for Facebook. CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in a blog post that the social networking website hit over 500 million users in only 6 years.

If you take a look at the worlds largest countries in terms of population (as of today according to Wikipedia) you find that China is #1 with 1,339,130,000, India is #2 with 1,184,513,000 and #3 is the United States with only 309,944,000. This would mean that if Facebook were a real country with their population of 500,000,000, then it would clearly surpass the USA for the #3 ranking.

Many believe that Facebook will hit a billion users in less than a year by looking the rapid growth they have encountered since their founding.  With their fast expansion the privacy issues on the website keep mounting as well. Make sure when you are using Facebook you are using it with the best possible protections – your common sense. Click here to learn more on Facebook Safety for users and parents of users.

In the Privacy Calendar, the action items that are important to take to protect your identity are listed by priority rather than mind-set. The order was determined according to three criteria:

1. Which steps need to be taken first to make the process simple?
2. Which actions are most effective at preventing identity theft?
3. Which items are you most likely to complete given time and resource constraints?

The detailed information for taking each of the steps is contained in the individual mind-set chapters of Privacy Means Profit, which are shown in italics and enclosed in parentheses following the steps, for easy identification. I strongly recommend that you refer back to each chapter for in depth explanations of each step.
I also highly recommend that you set up a schedule for yourself and complete the items phase by phase. Take 10 minutes a day, one hour per week, or one weekend a month and schedule time to ‘‘accumulate privacy.’’ If you have to wait on one of the action items—for example, you order your credit report but it will be 10 days before you receive it—move on to another of the items further down the list and return to the item you skipped when you receive the report.

The world is spying on you, and you don’t really even know it. A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal concludes that spying on consumers in order to sell their data is one of the fastest-growing internet businesses. Here is a summary of the most striking findings:

“The Study found that the nation’s 50 top websites on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with no warning… the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market like exchanges.”

The tracking software records and analyzes your browsing patterns. It knows if you’re surfing porn sites, researching bipolar disorder or watching teen movie trailers. With startling accuracy, it interpret’s these patterns and sells the information to websites, sometimes within seconds, that want access to your wallet. What’s the big deal, you ask? Why not let them market to us in highly targeted ways?

My girls messing around at the Barnes & Noble release of Privacy Means Profit.

Privacy Means Profit.

This book builds a bridge between good personal privacy habits (protect your wallet, online banking, trash, etc.) with the skills and motivation to protect workplace data (bulletproof your laptop, server, hiring policies, etc.).

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publish Date: 8.9.10 (August 9, 2010)
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN-10: 0470583894
ISBN-13: 978-0470583890

http://amzn.com/0470583894

Excerpt: At breakfast on the morning of August 12, 2003, a small and profitable computer company thrived at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. By lunchtime, that same business was on its way to ruin. Within twelve months, thanks to the theft of personal and company information, a forty-year-old family-business-turned-software-startup was doomed and John, heir to the prosperous enterprise, faced the prospect of prison for crimes he didn’t commit.

Beyond the specter of prison time for John, the situation held dire consequences for his family and friends. There was a real threat that his wife and two young daughters might be separated from their husband and daddy if John went to prison. John’s parents, who founded the company in 1964, shouldered most of the financial responsibility for the dying business and experienced declining health from the resulting stress. In the end, the situation would expose a dark secret in John’s close friend, Doug, a recent partner in the business.

Privacy Means Profit (Wiley) available in bookstores today!

Here are The Top 5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Buy It:

You love sharing bank account numbers, surfing habits and customer data with cyber thieves over unprotected wireless networks

You never tempt hackers and con artists by using Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Docs, or other cloud computing platforms to store or communicate private info, personally or professionally.

You bury your head in the sand, insisting that “insider theft” won’t affect your home or business.

You’ve already hardened your laptops and other mobile computing devices in 7 vital ways,  eliminating a major source of both personal and corporate data theft.

You have a “thing” for identity theft recovery costs and would rather invest thousands in recovery than $25 in prevention.

If you want to defend yourself and your business against identity theft, data breach and corporate espionage, then buy a copy of Privacy Means Profit.

Privacy Means Profit

Prevent Identity Theft and Secure You and Your Bottom Line

Privacy Means Profit builds a bridge between good personal privacy habits (protect your wallet, online banking, trash, etc.) with the skills and motivation to protect workplace data (bulletproof your laptop, server, hiring policies, etc.).