Spam on Facebook

As Social media grows and Facebook expands many are concerned with the privacy and safety of the site. With more and more users on Facebook it seems scammers and spam tries to sneak in and grow with Facebook. Recently pornographic pictures, photo-shopped pictures of celebrities and images of violence spread through the social media site. Spammers tricked users into copying a code into their browsers to spread the content. CNN published an article by Doug Gross, titled, Facebook and the fight against spammers, giving some insight on the concern. CNN reported less than 4% of content on Facebook is Spam compared to 89% through email.

Facebook’s security has been top notch in the past. However spammers and scammers are also clever. Chester Wisniewski, a senior analyst with security firm Sophos, gave his opinion of the matter when he commented, “"If it's malware-related ... scams and spam and things like that ... they're pretty good about it," he said. "They're very conscious about the fact that they don't want their users to be infected. But with the survey scams and things, they don't seem to be that effective.”

Facebook responded to the issue through Spokesman Andrew Noyes when he said, "We believe the security fight requires a multipronged approach. In addition to our dedicated legal team, Facebook also has security experts and engineers focused on the integrity of the site. We're continuing to build systems to prevent and respond to spam attacks. Our User Operations team also works around the clock to identify problems and assist those affected. The article shared other efforts of Facebook including a recent testing of a tool, Trusted Friends and App Passwords. Users who forget passwords for their account, or had a password change without their knowledge can request a key from three to five trussed friends. The social media site also launched reward programs last year the pays people to catch scammers and report security problems. Facebook would like to add other security programs but doesn’t want to slow the system down.

Facebook proves again and again that they are on the ball when it comes to catching security issues. In the past, Facebook was awarded $711 million court ordered from the “Spam King”, Sandford Wallace. They also won a $360 million judgment against another spammer, Phillip Porembski, and sued Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital for sending offensive images on the social site. Facebook was awarded $873 million from the case, the largest amount ever awarded under federal anti-spam laws. Users should thank the company for their proactive actions against security breeches and be on guard when using social media websites.