Facebook has teamed up with online security firm, Websense, in an effort to stop its users from visiting corrupt or harmful websites by clicking on links inside of Facebook itself. This is in response to a proportion of users unwittingly clicking on hacking and/or spam links which they believe have been posted by their online friends.
Such links and re-direction can be dangerous to computer users as software can be secertly downloaded so passwords and access data is sent to unwanted third parties making it dangerous for other website security/logins and even online banking.
While Facebook does currently warn users that they are going to a new website upon clicking on links, no distinction is made between harmless and malicious ones, so this new feature should really help limit spam and corruption making users aware of the dangers that await them. The safer Facebook is, the happier their customers will be and with 700 Million users, these defense measures have been a long time coming and are very welcome. Websense's Spencer Parker told the BBC:
"There's over 700 million users on Facebook, as a piece of real estate, it's extremely profitable to be targeted by malware writers." ~ Courtesy of BBC Online
The problem with spam links via a social network over any other type of online threat, is that the links and spam tend to be sent or published by your friends. This means you are much more likely to trust that link as you believe it's from someone you know and trust in real life over a spam email or a pop up on your screen. This trust element that is associated with social networking, is why spam has been able to be so successful in this industry. Hopefully, these new measures really will help limit spam sites and images from your news feed. This new security action will be activated next week.
Who Wrote This Article
I'm Nikki and I work at MarketMeSuite, the social media marketing dashboard. We have some Great news! We are now free! Please check it out and be sure to let me know what you think.
~Articles mentioned in this post: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15154014
~Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/h2oalchemist