Facebook is the single most popular social networking website in the world with more than one billion active users. Closer to home, in Malaysia, almost half of the country’s population is Facebook users with youth being the majority. They are extremely vulnerable to cyber-threats as the massive popularity of Facebook makes it the perfect medium for cybercriminals to commit crimes.
A recent study by Trend Micro indicates Malaysians are very active on Facebook with almost 56% of the respondents are always connected the social site.
From this study, Trend Micro has found the following behaviours that expose Facebook users to cyber-threats:
- 29% allow everyone to view, share or tag their activities on Facebook. This open doors to cyber-threats like social engineering, identity theft, cyber bullying besides real-world threats such as abduction and burglary.
- 82.9% actively click shared links and this makes them susceptible to malicious links which are on the rise. Recently, Trend Micro found hundreds of malicious websites emerging on the Internet, claiming to stream the box office hit, Iron Man 3.
- 30.6% admit they have never changed their Facebook password. Failing to change passwords regularly and using the same password for multiple websites are like giving the hacker one key that can open every lock in your house.
Infographic below: