During the talk, I used some links for demos (many thanks to my good friend Dave Marcus for originally showing me a few of these). For those that are interested, here are the links:

• Trend Tracking:
  • http://www.twitscoop.com/
  • http://twopular.com/
  • http://hashtags.org/
• Location Tracking:
  • http://twittermap.eu/
• URL Shortening/Expanding:
  • http://tinyurl.com/
  • http://bit.ly
  • http://kiserai.net/turl.pl
• Facebook Search:
  • http://youropenbook.org/
• Https Everywhere Plugin:
  • https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
• Secure Browsing:
  • http://www.k7computing.com/secureweb

Andrew Lee
CTO K7 Computing

It also appears as though this is not the only threat to the users of these immensely popular sites. Facebook users who allow third-party applications to access their desktops could be at risk from phishing scams.

A rogue application called ‘sex sex sex and more sex!!!’ began sending out notification to users over the weekend, of which there were more than 287,000 users signed up.

Hyperlinks in the notifications redirected users to a malicious site which then pulled up the real Facebook login site in order to gain the user’s Facebook login details.

Many people use these social networking sites but are unaware of potentially threatening phishing scams.
Phishing is essentially email fraud, which sends out emails (or notifications in the case of Facebook) from legitimate looking sites such as banks. The sites that you are redirected to will often be set up to look very similar to the actual site itself.

Typically the aim of phishing is to trick the user into entering personal details, so in the case of a bank this would be login details, personal and financial information and passwords.

Phishing generally uses spam emails sent to thousands of people, in the hope that a few of those thousands will take the bait, so to speak, and enter the information that the scammer is ‘phishing’ for.
Legitimate companies will never email you to request your personal details, so it’s best to be suspicious of any emails that ask you to do so. If you submit this information after following a link, the phisher will be able to access your account and you will be vulnerable to identity theft as well as your money or personal information being stolen.

In order to avoid being caught by one of these phishing scams, you should avoid giving out any confidential information via emails, pop ups or instant messages. As mentioned previously, a legitimate site such as a bank, PayPal or Ebay will never ask you for your details via email.

Commonly many of the emails sent have bad spelling and grammar, so watch out for this even if the email directs you to somewhere that looks legitimate; after all, a professional organisation wouldn’t send out emails with misspellings.

If you are in doubt, it is best to contact the company directly where the email has supposed to have come from, in order to check if the request is legitimate.

You can also reduce the risk of phishing emails by keeping your antivirus and firewall software up to date. You can also set up a spam filter on your emails so that only ‘safe’ emails will be delivered to your inbox.

The event, taking place across all EU states, has this year placed a heavy focus on the dangers of using social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace or Bebo as well encouraging parents to closely monitor the online habits of their children.

Around 256m users have accounts with Facebook and MySpace combined, which allow users to connect with friends and relatives online, share photographs and personal details.

There are however concerns that many users of such sites may be unaware as to the risks posed by using such sites. The Safer Internet Day 2009 campaign has highlighted the case of American teenager Megan Meier, who committed suicide in 2006 following a series of abusive messages sent to her from a fake user account on MySpace

The campaign coincides with a report by MSN which revealed that 51% of 14-19 year-olds in Europe enjoy unrestricted access to the internet at home, free from any form of supervision or content filtering software

British parents were the most likely, 77%, to use filtering software whilst 87% regularly talk to their children about what they do online.

The MSN research also found that 29% of the teenagers it quizzed have suffered bullying while using the web. That finding supports the findings of a report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force released in December 2008 that claimed that “Bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threats that minors face, both online and offline.”

To mark the day, 17 social networking services have pledged to do more to prevent online bullying on their networks; these include Google / YouTube, Yahoo Europe, Microsoft Europe, Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. It is thought that this will see a number of measures introduced in the near future, such as a “report abuse” function.

For more information on Safer Internet Day, visit http://www.saferinternet.org.