According to some recent researches done by a developer in Netherlands the popular social networking sites Facebook and MySpace both suffered from an inherent flaw which allowed an attacker to steal their user’s private data. While Facebook and MySpace have denied the severity of the error (obviously!) the software world is in agreement that it was a serious weakness in the websites which should have been found and fixed long ago.
Here are some of the common things you can do to ensure your private data stays “private”!
1. Avoid clicking links from within Facebook or MySpace that eventually takes you out of the websites unless you can verify that the target website is a reputed safe one.
2. It is a very good practice to change your passwords regularly.
3. Avoid checking the “Remember Me” box on the login pages of these sites. It is better to let your browser remember the password so that as soon as you type in your username the password gets entered automatically by the browser. Most modern browsers offer this functionality. We can not stress enough how safer this approach is compated to ticking the “Remember Me” box!
For more technical kinds here is the complete story – http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140388/Developer_finds_major_coding_errors_in_Facebook_MySpace
Please do share your thoughts or comments or suggestions!
