MySpace Scams

Consumer Affairs Minister Tony Robinson yesterday warned people using networking websites they could expose themselves to scams.

“As more and more Victorians join social networking services, they need to be aware that there is an increasing number of con artists taking advantage of the popularity of these services to steal information and money,” Mr Robinson said.

“Frauds can use personal details listed on these sites to personalize their scam attempts.”

Some scammers use personalized emails persuading victims to give out their bank details, making their claims more believable by allowing their victim to view their MySpace, Facebook or Bebo page.

Frauds also use social networking sites to encourage users to unwittingly download spy ware software, which can be used to record online banking passwords.

Mr Robinson said users of social networking sites could protect themselves by only accepting “friend requests” from people they knew and trusted.

After wrapping up his work in the Star Wars saga, Darth Vader settled down in Allentown, Pa. At least, that’s what his MySpace page says.

Actually, there are at least a dozen people on the popular networking site claiming to be the famous villain-turned-hero, which tells us two things: There’s a lot of obvious lying going on and there’s not much being done to discourage it.

Both Facebook and MySpace have rules prohibiting participants from pretending to be someone else. But with droves of users — MySpace alone says it has more than 70 million — neither site is in the business of aggressively policing identity.

And they don’t have to. Sites like MySpace can’t be held liable for the actions of users, according to a ruling last year by a federal judge in Texas. The only time people come close to getting in trouble for using a false identity is when they commit a crime — usually it’s sexual predators stalking kids. But it’s the sex crime that brings charges. Using a fake persona is not a crime.

But soon it could be.

This month, federal officials in Los Angeles revealed they are investigating whether fraud was involved when 13-year-old Megan Meier hanged herself in 2006 after being taunted on MySpace by someone using a fake identity.

The account was linked to a neighboring Dardenne Prairie, Mo., family. Local authorities declined to file charges, saying the circumstances — various people had access to the account — made it difficult to assign blame. Creating the fictional Josh Evans, Megan’s tormentor, was not considered a crime.

The L.A. investigation — in the district that includes Santa Monica, the home of MySpace — is drawing attention across the country and the industry.

At the heart of the Megan Meier incident is a larger issue of honesty on the Internet, and why sitting in front of a computer makes it so easy for some people to stretch the truth, sometimes maliciously.

“It’s just so much easier to pretend to be someone else online. People are very eager to try it out,” said David Whittier, a professor at Boston University’s School of Education. “There’s really nothing wrong with that. In a way, it’s a wonderful thing.”

Unless, he said, it goes too far or is done to hurt someone, as in the Megan Meier case.

“There should be an appropriate penalty for what these people did,” Whittier said. “I’m hoping our civilized societies will work together to develop laws and guidelines to make cyberspace more civilized.”

But that’s where it gets sticky, some experts say. How do you regulate the Internet — a medium that promotes the quick flow of ideas of information — without strangling its creativity?

Catherine Dwyer, a professor at Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, doesn’t think it can be done.

Like others, she doubts the Internet will ever be able to guarantee the person on the other end of your digital line is who they say they are. Imagine, she said, the difficulties of forcing every online user to prove their identity when signing up for sites like MySpace.

MySpace has launched a free ad funded mobile version of itself.

MySpace Mobile had primarily been a service based on subscriptions available to Helio and AT&T subscribers until now. However, the new version will work on all the networks in US. MySpace users will be able to carry out the normal functions such as sending and receiving messages and friend requests, searching for friends, updating blogs, posting bulletins and commenting on pictures.

In the initial stages, banners and sponsorships will form the base of the ads. In due course, there will be more focus on targeted advertising and location based ads.

The launch can be seen as an initiative by Fox Interactive to expand the reach of MySpace. Social networking sites are increasingly being banned in educational institutes and work places, and this has prompted users to turn to their mobiles for accessing these sites. In addition, the number of users turning to their mobiles for web access and social network users on the move has increased significantly. MySpace too wants to tap in these users with its free ad funded mobile version. This might not have been possible if the services would have been confined to only Helio and AT&T subscribers.

As companies move to restrict Web surfing at work, more of them are blocking access to MySpace than to Facebook, according to a survey released Wednesday by Web security company Barracuda Networks Inc.

While 44% of companies using Barracuda’s Web filtering technology block access to MySpace, only 26% are doing the same to Facebook, according to an analysis of data contributed by several thousand customers, Barracuda said. While 19% of companies blocked both the sites, half said they block one or the other or both, the analysis showed.

Barracuda also conducted a separate survey of 228 IT security workers. It showed that 53% of businesses restrict Web surfing with automated Web filtering systems and almost two-thirds (65%) expect to enforce Web surfing restrictions in 2008. That would represent a 23% increase in the number of companies doing so. The top two reasons companies cited for enforcing Web surfing restrictions were virus or spyware protection (70%) and employee productivity drain (52%).

More than a third of the companies (36%) pointed to bandwidth concerns, while 28% cited liability issues as prompting them to restrict employee Internet access, the survey noted.

The analysis of the data from the Web filters shows that companies consistently block Web sites with content related to hacking, illegal drugs, intolerance and hate, phishing and fraud, offensive content, terrorism, violence, weapons and spam.

Companies had varying approaches to Web surfing, with 21% actively monitoring employee Internet activity and 6% enforcing time restrictions on employee use of the Internet.

“Businesses are increasingly applying content-control mechanisms to protect their networks and maintain maximum organization productivity,” Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks, said in a statement. “With the changing face of the Internet, companies need the flexibility to continuously monitor and customize Internet policy enforcement while providing their employees optimum use of the Web.”

A million US victims lost “billions of dollars” to email phishing scams in the past two years, new research has warned.

According to Consumer Reports’s latest State of the Net survey, American consumers lost more than $7 billion over the last two years to viruses, spyware, and phishing scams.

Additionally, the survey shows that consumers face a one in four chance of succumbing to an online threat, a number that has slightly decreased since last year.

The number of consumers responding to email phishing scams has remained constant at eight per cent. The research projects that one million US consumers lost billions of dollars over the past two years to such scams.

The study went on to warn that many underage youngsters are at risk on social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. In households surveyed with minors online, 13 per cent of the children registered on MySpace were younger than 14, the minimum age the site officially allows, and three per cent were under 10. And those were just the ones the parents knew about.

Based on the survey, Consumer Reports projects that problems caused by viruses and spyware resulted in damages of at least $5 billion over the past two years.

The poll was conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center among a nationally representative sample of more than US 2,000 households with internet access.

Based on survey projections, computer virus infections prompted an estimated 1.8 million households to replace their computers in the past two years and 850,000 households to replace computers due to spyware infections in the past six months.

Additionally, 33 per cent of survey respondents did not use software to block or remove spyware. And the study projects that 3.7 million US households with broadband remain unprotected by a firewall.

MySpace Scams has redesigned the website, hoping to make it easier for you to find the information you need. Let us know how you like the new look and special thanks to ndesign for the layout.

Raiders fans have never been accused of being classy (or smart), so it figures that they would take out their frustrations on the MySpace page of Randy Moss. Most of the language was pretty blue, but pretty much what you would expect to hear in the Black Hole. So this kind of thing was expected. Actually, it would have been an upset if the Raiders fans didn’t react this way.

But what is the best part of all of this? That the Raiders would resort to the tactics typically reserved for teenage girls that have been bashed on the Internet meeting place. Seriously, how old are you guys, 10? Or the fact that the page probably doesn’t belong to Randy Moss at all?

Either way, you have to love those knuckleheads.

We have decided to go ahead and implement a forum into MySpaceScams.com We have been receiving many requests and emails and figured we ought to have the MySpace community involved. Please feel free to post what you know and help keep each other safe on MySpace.

Visit the forum.