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Predators use Facebook to groom Kids

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Lock this guy up for good. That’s a most fitting motto for Brandon McIntyre, 22, who pretended he was “Katie Thompson” on Facebook and threatened to kill a girl’s family if she refused to go on trips with him.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-online-risks-sign-road-banner-image34668294This New Jersey nutcase made another ridiculous threat (ridiculous, because, how could he think that even young victims could take him seriously?) to a 12-year-old, telling her he was a cop who’d have her expelled from school and sent to state prison for failing to obey a police officer. The “order” was to send him explicit photos of herself.

Posing as a police officer, he even told a woman via texting he’d have her daughter taken away if she refused to go on a date with him. He could get 30 years in federal prison and fines totaling half a million dollars.

The next predator was a bit more convincing, using Facebook to talk a boy into ducking out of his home in the middle of the night to meet him. Adam Brown, 21, was caught by the victim’s mother. Brown got the boy’s confidence first by posting videos of himself and telling jokes. The boy’s mother worked nights and his grandmother watched him and his siblings.

One night she returned to find their dog acting strange; she discovered the boy wasn’t in his bed. She contacted him via cell and he said he was just out walking. She drove out and picked him up, took away his phone and computer, and demanded his passwords. She then gained access to the cyber dialogue between him and Brown. In the dialogue, Brown told the boy that the boy was cute. And the dialogue got worse. The boy actually met Brown, who had threatened suicide if he refused.

His mother told Brown, after contacting him, to cease contact with her son, but he contacted him again and made creepy comments.

  • Get full access to your kids social accounts.
  • Monitor their device activity without notice.
  • Have in-depth detailed conversations about how predators lure kids.
  • Read every news report about these issues and discuss with your kid.
  • Turn off all wireless and wired internet at night so kids can’t have access.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to BestHomeSecurityCompanys.com discussing burglar proofing your home on Fox Boston. Disclosures.

10 most dangerous Facebook Scams

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Twenty percent of the world’s population is “on” Facebook—that’s well over a billion people.

14DTop 10 Most Popular Facebook Scams

  1. Profile visitor stats. It’s all about vanity. It doesn’t take long for any new Facebook user to see an ad offering to reveal how many people are viewing your profile. You can even find out who’s viewing. It must make a lot of FB users feel validated to know how many people are viewing them and just whom, because this scam comes in at the top.

    Is it really that important to know how many people are viewing your profile? Even if your self-worth depends on this information, Facebook can’t provide it. These ads are scams by hackers.

  2. Rihanna sex tape. What a sorry life someone must be leading to be lured into clicking a link that promises a video of a recording star having sex. Don’t click on any Rihanna sex tape link, because the only intimacy you’ll ultimately witness is a hacker getting into your computer.
  3. Change your profile color. Don’t click on anything that relates to changing your FB profile color. Facebook is blue. Get over it. You’ll never get red, purple, pink, black, grey, white, red, orange or brownish-magenta. Forget it. Deal. If you see this offering in your news feed, ignore it. It’s a scam.
  4. Free Facebook tee shirt. Though this offering seems quite innocuous, anyone who never rushes to click things will realize that this can’t possibly be legitimate. Do you realize how much a billion tee shirts cost? Even if you don’t know that one-fifth the world’s population uses Facebook, you should know that an enormous number of people use it and they aren’t getting a t-shirt.
    1. Where would Facebook get the money to 1) produce all those tee shirts (even if one-tenth of FB users wanted one, that’s still a LOT of money), and 2) mail the shirts out, and 3) pay reams of people to package the shirts and address the packages? People, THINK before you click!
  5. See your top 10 Facebook stalkers. This is just so funny, how can anyone take it seriously and be lured into clicking it?
  6. Free giveaways. It’s cliché time: Nothing’s free in this world—certainly not on Facebook. End of story.
  7. See if a friend has deleted you. This, too, sounds suspicious. And besides, is it really that important if a “friend” has deleted you? Do you even personally know every individual who has ever friended you? This feature does not exist. You’re better off pretending that nobody would ever want to delete you because you’re so special! But actually, there are plug-ins available that perform this function, but still, stay away.
  8. Find out who viewed your profile. Again, here’s a scam that works well on people who have too much time on their hands. This function doesn’t exist on Facebook.
  9. Just changed my Facebook theme and it’s rad! Ignore this at all costs.
  10. Tragedy of the day. Whenever there is something horrific going on such as Mother Nature getting all murderous or some manmade disaster or even a celebrity dying, you can be sure Facebook scammers are on top of the breaking news with a “video” or “photo” that simply isn’t. Just don’t click it.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

Facebook Security for Parents and Teens

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Facebook offers a hefty amount of security measures that parents and teens should know.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-identity-theft-red-words-binary-code-computer-monitor-image39907813The Login

  • Social authentication. A hacker will have a harder time hacking into your Facebook account if he or she must identify your friends via photos. This verification process is social authentication, and it’s easier to use than having to remember another password.
  • ID verification. A new user must create a security question with an answer. An extra layer of security is achieved when the user adds their smartphone number so they can receive a text message with a code.
  • One-time password. You can get a one-time password; just send a text to 22605.
  • Login approval. Suppose someone logs into your account with an unfamiliar device. A code will be sent to your mobile. The user will need to verify the login next time they try to log in.
  • Session classifier. Every login is verified using details like your device and location.

Online

  • Application classifier. This checks out application activity to see if it’s suspicious.
  • User action classifier. This detects when a user’s behavior is suspicious.
  • Link scanner. Every day, Facebook scans over a trillion links. Every link is compared against not only Facebook’s, but also other Internet security companies’ databases of known malicious or spammy links.
  • Photo DNA. About 300 million photos are uploaded every day to Facebook, and Facebook compares these to its blacklist database of images from international, federal and state law enforcement agencies.

The Logout

  • Hacking suspicion. If you suspect something fishy, you can manually shut Facebook down and reset your password.
  • Login alert. You can approve the device you use to log in, though you can get a security notification if you log in from an unapproved device.
  • Guardian angel. If you can’t gain access to your account, your friends can receive a code. Then pre-select these individuals from the account settings page.
  • Roadblock. Your profile will be locked by Facebook and scanned with security software, should your account be infiltrated with malware. A cleaned-up account will be certified by Facebook.
  • Remote logout is available.

Considerations for Teens

The age setting. Many kids lie about their age on social media. Have your child sign into Facebook and go to the profile “About” page to make sure their birthdate is correct.

Liking ads. Warn you kids about what can happen if they “like” an ad. Liking an ad will likely result in receiving updates from the ad page, and the user’s name could become associated with future renditions of the ad. Is this what your teen wants? Ask your teen how important it is for them to “like” an ad just because the ad has this feature.

Unliking. Once you “like” something, doesn’t mean you can’t unlike it. To find out what your teen has liked, visit the profile page and click “More,” “Likes,” then “Other Likes.” Hover at the upper-right corner; a pop-up box will result with a choice to unlike. Learn of your teen’s apps by going to Facebook’s main page to click on “Apps,” located on the news feed’s left side. Here you can disconnect applications.

Flag ads. Think an ad is inappropriate? Flag it by clicking the small “X” or down-arrow located at the top right of the unappealing ad. Click “I don’t want to see this,” then “It’s offensive or inappropriate,” and then click the reason.

Free games may mean free unwanted software. Warn your teens that downloading a free game can also download a lot of undesirable clutter.

Although Facebook now uses SSL encryption with login and user sessions, it’s still a good idea to use an additional layer of protection on wireless sessions. Hotspot Shield encrypts your entire web surfing on any site, no matter its security settings.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

Recognize Your Willingness to give up your Privacy

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If a stranger stopped you on the street and requested your e-mail address and birthdate, would you give it to that person? A rational person would never give up this information.

1PThis is the same guard you should have when giving out your personal information to set up an online account, setting up a social account or to get some bargain or great deal on a product or service. Most people will give up all their data for 10% off at a shoe store.

Many people blindly give out personal information online or in person to get that bargain. Sometimes, these choices are made by people who claim to value their privacy.

Those same people may not know that every time you log into free unencrypted WiFi you are most likely revealing everything you communicate on a PC, laptop or mobile? This is why an encrypted connection like one provided with Hotspot Shield is very necessary.

A study from Carnegie Mellon University, conducted by Alessandro Acquisti, turned up some very interesting results.

He sent some graduate students to a shopping mall near Pittsburgh. The students were instructed to offer a $10 discount card, with an extra $2 discount to shoppers in exchange for their shopping information. Half turned down the extra offer. The $2 wasn’t enough to get them to reveal their shopping cart items.

Another group of shoppers was offered a $12 discount and the choice to exchange it for $10 if they desired to keep their shopping data private. Ninety percent decided to keep the $12 discount, which meant they were willing to reveal their shopping data.

What gives?

It looks as though if people already have ownership of private data from the get-go, they’re more likely to value it. If it’s yet to be acquired, however, the value placed on it is less.

So getting back to cyber space then, have you ever wondered if the data, that the online advertising industry collects on you, is truly scrambled so that it’s not possible to identify individuals?

Acquisti conducted another experiment. With a webcam he took snapshots of about 100 campus students. It took only minutes for him to identify about 30 percent of these nameless students by using facial recognition software.

He then went a step further and gathered enough information on about a quarter of the identified students via Facebook to guess a portion of their Social Security numbers.

Acquisti showed how simple it is to identify people from scratch because they leave a data trail in cyber space—and this includes photos. This shows how easy it is for criminals to use Facebook to steal a person’s identity.

Though it would violate Facebook’s terms of service to register a fake birthdate, the user needs to be aware of the tradeoff: Identity thieves love to find birthdates.

Facebook says that the user can control who sees personal information. So you just have to weigh the pros and cons. Is receiving well wishes on your birthday worth the risk of a thief using your basic information to steal your identity?

And by the way, thieves can use your Facebook profile photo to help steal your identity. Maybe this is why some people use their baby’s or dog’s photo for their Facebook photo?

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

Facebook + Hackers – Privacy = You Lose

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I’m as sick of writing about it as you are sick of reading about it. But because Facebook has become a societal juggernaut: a massive inexorable force that seems to crush everything in its way, we need to discuss it because it’s messing with lots of functions of society.

We should all now know that whatever you post on Facebook is not private. You may think it is, but it isn’t. Even though you may have gone through all kinds of privacy settings and locked down your profile, Facebook has changed them up internally so many times that they may have defaulted to something far less private then what you previously set.

Furthermore, no matter how private you have set them to, if you friend someone who you don’t know (like that human resource officer), they see what’s “private” and anyone on the “inside” can easily replicate anything you post to the world.

The activist groups waging what amounts to an undeclared war against the social-networking site for the last year, complete with no fewer than three letters to federal regulators claiming Facebook’s actions are illegal said that they’re hardly ready to declare a truce.

Attacks targeting Facebook users will continue, and they could easily become even more dangerous. Computerworld reports “There are limitations to what Facebook can do to stop this,” said Patrik Runald, a U.K.-based researcher for Websense Security Labs. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see another attack this weekend. Clearly, they work.”

Websense has identified more than 100 variations of the same Facebook attack app used in the two attacks, all identical except for the API keys that Facebook requires.

What does this mean to you?

For crying out loud stop telling the world you hate your boss, neighbor, students’ teachers, or spouse and you’d like to boil a bunny on the stove to teach them a lesson. I guarantee even if you are kidding, someone won’t like it. What you say/do/post, lasts forever.

Stop playing the stupid 3rd party games. When you answer “25 questions about whatever” that data goes straight into the hands of some entity that you would never have volunteered it to.

Make sure you PC is secured. Keep your operating system up to date with security patches and anti-virus and don’t download anything from any email you receive or click links in the body of any email. Once you start messing with these files you become a Petri dish spreading a virus.

Robert Siciliano personal security expert to Home Security Source discussing Facebook scams on CNN.