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In the United States social networks are considered to be public spaces and any information shared there is covered under the so-called third-party doctrine, which means that users have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the data their service providers collect about them. Any data you post online in any format (regardless of privacy settings), or any data collected by the third parties with whom you may have an agreed-upon business relationship, is not considered private, yet many people willingly stream data and images to their network in the mistaken belief that they are the only one who will see or have access to it.

In 2010, Eric Schmidt of Google said that the world produced as much information in two days as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003. In 2014 it was estimated that each day the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, so much that 90 percent of the data in the world at that time was created in the previous two years. As of 2016, we produced as much information in 10 minutes as did the first 10,000 generations of human beings. There is no way humanly possible to monitor and protect all of that data. The more data, the more data breaches.

Facebook admitted in 2011 (when it had just 500 million users) that more than 600,000 of its accounts were compromised every single day. Each of those security breaches could have been used for identity theft, criminal impersonation, tax fraud, health insurance scams, or a plethora of other possible criminal offenses. According to Facebooks 2014 annual report, up to 11 percent of its accounts are fake, meaning more than 140 million accounts at that time. Any data we entrust to social media can be leaked to criminals, terrorists, or others.

It is estimated that at least 40 percent of social media users have been exposed to at least one form of malware, and more than 20 percent have had their social networking or e-mail account compromised or taken over by a third-party without permission. To better understand how simple it is for that to happen, if you happen to check your Facebook account at your local Starbucks while in the process sharing its network with 30 other people, and if one of them happens to be a hacker running a program called Firesheep, the hacker could use the plug-in to log in as you on your own Facebook account. Known as sidejacking, this happens all the time.

Cyber stalkers send unwanted e-mails, tweets and text messages, or spread rumors online. They easily obtain detailed information about their victims, such as home address and phone number.

With an estimated two-thirds of college-aged students engaging in sexting (sharing sexually explicit SMS photographs via their phones), the scope for a problem continues to grow rapidly. In January 2017, Facebook had to assess nearly 54,000 potential cases of revenge pornography and sextortion for the month, disabling more than 14,000 accounts related to this type of sexual abuse, with 33 of the cases reviewed involving children.

Criminals no longer wait to see if your newspaper delivery has built up on your front doorstep before they target you for a burglary. Today, either they, or the data brokers they may use, scrape information from your social media for lead generation. Another way they target their future victims is via locational data in files posted online-the silently implanted metadata in photographs, videos and status updates shared by mobile devices, which reveal the date, time and GPS coordinates where photos and videos were taken, as well as the serial number of the phone or camera. The metadata is easily accessible by anyone who knows how to download a simple browser plug-in to access them. With any one of hundreds of free tools, your photos and videos can be made to appear on a Google Map that allows anyone to zoom in on the precise location where the picture was taken.

Social media platforms should build awareness regarding security precautions and information disclosure, so that users are encouraged to take more care and become more conscious about revealing their personal information in their profiles. Ideally, the platforms would embark on broadly-based educational campaigns and governments would do the same. Ultimately, however, it is incumbent upon social media users to do their part to take some basic precautions to protect themselves, and take the question of security more seriously. They are the first and last firewall, for it is they who decide what sites to go to and which links to click on.

*Daniel Wagner is author of the new book Virtual Terror and Managing Director of Risk Cooperative.

The rest is here:
Social Media's Contribution To Virtual Terrorism - HuffPost

Latin American social networking site Taringa has suffered a database breach that has resulted in the spill of more than 28 million records.

Usernames, hashed passwords (using the weak MD5 algorithm) and personal email addresses have been exposed by the breach. Argentinia-based Taringas breach statement (in Spanish) can be found here. Neither phone numbers nor addresses from Bitcoin wallets associated with a Taringa program were exposed by the breach, according to the Reddit-like social networking site.

LeakBase claims that it has already cracked 94 per cent of password hashes exposed in the latest dumps.

In response, Taringa which has users all over the Spanish-speaking world has applied a password reset as well as urging consumers to review their use of login credentials elsewhere to make sure they are not using the same (now compromised) passwords on other sites.

Although the breach affects a consumer site, it poses a risk for corporates because it opens the door to the well-practised hacker tactic of using the same login credentials to break into more sensitive (webmail, online banking) or corporate accounts. The still widespread practice of password reuse opens the door to such credential stuffing attacks.

A list of top 50 common/worst passwords chosen by Taringa users can be found here.

Andrew Clarke, EMEA director at One Identity, opined: "The reported breach at Taringa highlights some fundamental issues. The fact that an administrative file holding passwords was accessible demonstrates little or no control over privileged accounts.Then the passwords were easily cracked since the company used a weak MD5 (128-bit) algorithm rather than SHA-256.

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Bazinga! Social network Taringa 'fesses up to data breach - The Register

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court directed Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, Microsoft and Yahoo on Monday to respond on how many complaints they received in the last two years for allowing obscene materials like child pornography and rape videos to be circulated through their platforms and action taken by them.

A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and U U Lalit also directed the Centre to give details of cases registered by government authorities against people for circulating sexually exploitative videos of child including pornographic or making obscene representation of a child or children under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences(POCSO) Act. It granted 10 days for Centre and social networking sites to file the report.

The Court passed the order in a case in which it had taken suo motu cognisance on the basis of a letter written to Chief Justice of India by a Hyderabad-based NGO Prajwala, bringing to notice the rape videos being widely circulated on WhatsAap. It had directed the CBI to probe in to the cases and to catch hold of culprits committing rapes and sharing the video through the social networking site.

As the Centre and internet giants had expressed its inability to evolve mechanism to stop uploading of offending videos of rape and child pornography, the apex court had earlier directed top technocrats Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft to come to India and participate in brain storming meeting for 15 days to find out solution to deal with the problem. The committee

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SC asks social networking sites to give number of complaints on ... - Times of India

The Miiverse is dying.

For five years, Nintendo fans have filled up the walls of Nintendo's social media service with simple communications and beautiful hand drawn art. That art often filtered into Wii U and 3DS games, and made for unique experiences while playing Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon online. All of that will end on November 7, 2017 when Nintendo pulls the plug.

"We started the Miiverse service in 2012 along with the launch of the Wii U system because we wanted to provide a space where users could share their feelings about games with each other," Nintendo said in a statement. "Thanks to users' support throughout the years, we think we were able to achieve that goal. We decided to end the service at this time because, among other reasons, many users are shifting to social networking services."

On November 8, Miiverse users will wake up to a world where all their art, conversations, and Luigi associated shitposting will disappear. That is, unless, Tim Miller and the Archive Team can save it. Miller is a web developer and the Archive Team is a loose collective of programmers and archivists interested in preserving the world's digital history. It's most famous project was rescuing large parts of GeoCities from the ashes in 2009. They've teamed up to archive and host the Miiverse before it's gone forever.

"The great art on Miiverse will be lost when it shuts down," Miller announced on Twitter on September 3. "So I'm writing an archiver to try and save it." Two hours later he had archived 30,000 images from the Japanese Miiverse alone.

"Social networks disappearing leaves behind a ton of content," Miller told me via an Archive Team IRC channel. "People have invested a ton of time and effort into giving parts of themselves up to it. Just look at the Splatoon drawing feed. The effort that goes into that art is insane. And Nintendo is going to go 'Fuck you, it's gone.'"

Miller acknowledged that Nintendo is allowing users to save their content by requesting an archive through Miiverse. The company promised to send users a URL containing their content, minus both comments and messages from others, from which they can download their Miiverse account.

Miller thinks he and Archive Team can do better. He wants to save everything. "Art, posts, user data," he said. "Leave no stone unturned. To me, it's all important, I'm not one to judge content. That's for history to judge."

"To me, and I think would go to the rest of Archive Team, it's a part of history and culture," he said. "And saving that for future generations is important. While it may be a failed social network for Nintendo, it's still apart of our culture in some way."

Once the team has collected all the data, Miller plans to create an easily shareable database for everyone to use. He's not interested in creating a site for the content, but he wants all that sweet Splatoon art ready to go in case someone else does.

Check out Miller's archiver at his Github or get involved by jumping into the Archive Team IRC channel.

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The Mission to Archive Nintendo's Dying Social Media Platform - Motherboard

Did you know your teen can go online and get drugs, learn about getting high or find out what other kids are experiencing? According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), teens increasingly use secretive social media sites like Snapchat, where parents dont lurk.

Most of these social networking apps are free and readily available, and most kids are several steps ahead of parents on privacy settings. Still, the DEA has a few tips for helping your child develop the skills to make good online choices.

1. Talk with your child about the implications of online actions.

2. Monitor your childs online activity, and learn about the websites and apps they use.

3. Block inappropriate content with parental features.

4. Enable restrictions on phones and home computers.

5. Learn webspeak, the abbreviated language kids use when texting or chatting.

Basic Webspeak

DOC = Drug of Choice

PAL = Parents are Listening

BRB = Be Right Back

P911 = Parent Alert

420 = Marijuana

KPC = Keeping Parents Clueless

Other important tips include talking with your child about basic social media safety. Remind them that some actions have consequences and, despite what they may think nothing ever truly disappears from the internet.

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Social Media Safety - The Star Democrat