Malware alert

As far as I'm concerned I never use social networking sites, and this warning is a damned good reason not to.

Yeah, I gave up on Twitter real quick. Unfortunately, after years of resistance, I finally broke down and joined FaceBook.

I figured what the hell... anyone steal my identity and they're in a world o' hurt.

I'm only holdin' on 'cause I believe in God the baptist way and I'm stubborn as a mule.

I only signed up on Facebook for entertainment purposes. Observing on how dependent people are on such a website and how they pour out their drama-laden hearts on their usually-amusing status messages every 5-10 minutes is something that I will not get tired of anytime soon as it brightens up my day.

With the rest though (Twitter, Tumblr)...to hell with them and I'm glad I've made that decision.

Hi,

Keep in mind that merely clicking on the link is not going to automatically authorize anything — that only happens if you click the Authorize button after clicking the link. So, like many viruses, worms and scams, you have to actively give it to yourself, rather than having it attack you as you stand by innocently.

I have never seen a virus asking for authorization before contaminating a PC. While your statement is a tad bit flawed, I think I know what you are saying. Viruses do hide behind links and portray themselves as being something they are not. If you are not careful and you do give authorization, you may not be getting what you ask for. Even looking at it from that point of view, viruses don't always need authorization. There are viruses that hide behind flash based media and all that is needed is viewing the media to become infected. No authorizing anything, just viewing the media.

I joined Facebook because my Dad was looking for an old work buddy, and just decided that I would just have family on it.

It's really a good tool if you have family scattered all over the southeast.

I'm sorry, but what the hell is this mentality of "don't use social networks, you'll get a virus". The probability of you getting a tweet / message with a link to an infected page is already pretty low. Now if you did receive one - would you be dumb enough to click the link? Supposing you did - I don't believe this thing saying going on the page will get you infected; maybe for IE6, but pretty much all new browsers are sandboxed and have security features. If tomorrow Google gave you a link to infected content; would you stop using Google for that?

And come on, there's more of a chance of you getting a virus while watching pron or whatnot.

Also, "hacked" accounts get removed in minutes. If you were Twitter, wouldn't you find it weird when one of your users started spamming with obfuscated links?

The whole idea behind this myth lies in the fact that most people on social networks aren't "Techsperts" If they see an add somewhere or a link that someone put out there, you never know what kind of script lies behind it. You can link the link back to a javascript in order to execute it if you host a javascript file on your own server soemwhere, and then that same link can parse javascript input from different functions to do various things. People just don't know a lot about internet security.

It's like programming, You can't really say that C or C++ is better than one another, they are both intended for similar things, and C is a fairly high level language. C++ has lots of maneuverability though. But in the end, it really comes down to the programmer, not the language. Just like it comes down to the computer user, and not the website. You can't rely on your AV all the time, Viruses get updated with new encrypted malicious strings that have to be added to the AV's detection database for an AV to detect something. Use some discretion and you'll be better off than a few people.

Why not use twitter. It is a good site and in case some viruses are attacking through this site, then why do we have an anti virus. The anti virus is suppose to perform the task here by stopping the virus from damaging the files. Social networking sites have become a life line now and avoiding it is now a big no!

Thus, instead get a good anti virus that will serve your purpose rather than giving up the social networking sites all together.