Facebook users should remain vigilant as the new timeline feature introduced by the social networking site is all set to embarrass users if a warning from a technology blog is any indication. Techwag has warned facebook users that adult sites could show up in their account timelines once the new feature goes live in the coming weeks.The timeline feature means you will now have an ongoing and persistent record of your activities when on the social networking site and so will others who can view your page.This means that if a porn site uses passive sharing options on Facebook, has “like” buttons on its page or allows people to sign into their site using your Facebook details then all of that will now be recorded on your timeline.
Chitra Gaikwad a house wife said, “I’m concerned about two porn links posted by someone on my timeline. I’m on strict filtering, so I am notified whenever I am tagged in any photo or comments. Few days back, I lost my facebook password, and my account which I hardly use was posted with some porn. Some of my friends and family were shocked to see porn shared on my timeline and they informed me. I checked my profile using my husband’s account and saw two porn links posted there. I approached a friend for help but he was unable to help me. Finally, my brother-in-law, posted a note tagging me by alerting everyone that the account is not used by me anymore.”
Divya Darji, a working woman said, “I don’t visit porn sites or any malicious sites. I hardly use internet. Some obscene content was posted on my timeline tagging 20 people randomly who were not even my friends. Most of my facebook friends are my family members. I was very upset when my in-laws saw pornography posted on my wall; some says it’s a virus. To make matters worse, I don’t have any option to delete, hide, report or spam the post. Finally, I had to deactivate this account and register for a new one.”
Kai Farmer, Ethical Hacker said, “It’s happening due to a browser affected by a new malware and the same malware plugin gets attached to a browser. Everytime when you post something on facebook along with it a new spam post will be posted on timeline at same time.”
“You can prevent it by sanitising the browser. Just uninstall the browser and re-install it or you can download addons or extensions like Adblock and no scripts. It will prevent from executing malicious scripts at your browser” he added.
“Don’t allow any third party apps to access facebook. Just go to facebook settings and you can find all app list to access facebook components, you can allow and deny access to it. Don’t visit any rogue websites like likes.com and allow facebook access on it. Browse carefully” he said.
According to a security expert, “Letting apps place a huge amount of information into your timeline at the click of a button and granting that App access to your feed and to share your activity invites serious privacy concerns. It could be the news articles you read online, the videos you watch, the photos you view, the music you listen to, or any other action within the site or App. Facebook calls this auto-sharing ‘Gestures’.”
Cyber security expert, Aashray Anand told this paper, “Whenever such incidents happen, look for some unwanted app in victim’s facebook profile! Remove it and problem would be solved!”
Ethical Hacker Gagan Jattana said, “Next time be careful while adding friends, adding new apps or logging in different sites with your facebook account.”
One of the facebook users even raised a query that his facebook account seems to have hacked and it kept posting porn related post on his timeline. His friend’s names were tagged in every post, and was written in Malay / Indonesian language. He had changed his facebook password twice and email password once, but it has failed to work. People are also posting porn videos on his business page.
“Users should change settings and page administrator password. It’s probably one of these two attacks. They are installing key-logger viruses on your computer and getting your admin password/ rights. In which case you change your passwords and scan your machines for viruses,” he added.
“You have left the page settings to default so anyone can post on the site. In this case, read pages and change settings or probably they’ve sent a joining request and have been let in, in this case you check who is posting is a member of the forum or not and kick them out. Do this and you won’t have to track/ delete posts as they won’t be able to post in the first place” he added.
A security expert said, “It has nothing to do with your settings. If somebody in your friend list or in his friend list visits porn sites then a script is generated from there which automatically tags friends and his friends and display it on your wall.”
