Midwest City, Oklahoma (PRWEB) November 02, 2011
Although its the worlds most popular social network site, with more than 800 million users, Facebook user information is attractive to black hatshackers on the dark side, according to Cyber Security students at Rose State College. Users should take steps to take care.
A lot of people really like Facebook, but you have to be careful using it, said Rose State College Cyber Security Club president Henry Williams. You might have vulnerabilities.
Rose State College is currently the only community college in the United States that trains students in all six levels of federal Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS) certification. Students who graduate from the program often go on to work for the government organizations, such as the CIA, the Department of Defense, the FBI or the NSA, as well as private firms. Williams said the students in the program have learned to be careful with online activity.
Recently, a study of more than 2,000 users of Facebook, released by CCPGroup, an international marketing services business, found that more than a third of Facebook users had sensitive information on their pages that could be used to hack their bank accounts or other financial services.
Often, information entered on Facebook by its users is involved in some of its most popular features. An example would be its popular birthday notification. Thats a problem, says Williams.
Your date of birtheven a partial date, such as the day and monthis used as an identifier at your bank and in other important records, Williams said. While we all want to wish our friends a happy birthday, and enjoy being wished a happy birthday, it wont be all that happy if someone uses the information to steal your identity.
Other security measures one needs to keep in mind when using Facebook, according to the Rose State cyber sleuths, include:
