Social engineering attacks in Social Networking Websites

Recently I saw a community in a Social Networking website. They have discussed some nice topics.

But there are some culprits, they use these type of communities to gain some useful information from people who using this type of communities. I saw post titled “Boost your modem speed to Broadband speed”. He has mentioned like he is having a software to boost the dial-up modem speed to Broadband speed. And people who wants this software post their email address.

More than 100 users posted their email addresses to get the software. And some people also mentioned their phone numbers too. See What a wonderful idea to collect 100 email addresses. Not only the person who posted this topic gets 100 email addresses and also whoever sees the topic gets 100 email addresses.

This is not only way of getting benefit from Social Networking Site. Some people post some interesting topic like “Want to hack a password of a email address” , and the content will be a link to website. The website is full of google ads, may be hosted some exploits.. No need to write a skillful virus to collect email addresses.

People who are all using these Social Networking websites should be much careful about privacy. We dont know the value of our Email address and phone numbers. Your Email Id could be used for spamming, marketing, and phishing.. Moderators of these communities should be careful before approving any post.