Spam and hacking attacks increased by 71 per cent during 2009, IT security firm Sophos has revealed.
According to the Financial Times, the research showed that around 57 per cent of social network users have received spam messgaes, while an additional 36 per cent have received malicious code through their preferred social website.
“People are used to receiving spam and malware on e-mail, but are lulled into a greater sense of security on social networking sites, because they assume they are just getting messages from friends. They are more likely to open messages,” commented Sophos’ senior technology consultant Graham Cluley.
Although malware is on the rise, it is still growing at a slower rate than the websites themselves. Last year, Facebook grew by 600 per cent while Twitter grew by 2,800 per cent.
Advertisement
Related Stories
- Over half of UK companies infected by malware Feb 13th 2012 at 11:57AM
- Google describes 'Bouncer' Android anti-malware system Feb 3rd 2012 at 6:41AM
- The US and China are responsible for 40 per cent of global hacks Feb 2nd 2012 at 6:37AM
- Apple OS X updates released Feb 2nd 2012 at 5:44AM
- Symantec tells users to disable PCAnywhere Jan 27th 2012 at 7:10AM
- Russian gang expose shuts down Facebook virus Koobface Jan 19th 2012 at 4:38AM
- 'Lilupophilupop' SQL hack tops one million infected sites Jan 6th 2012 at 5:01AM
- British student admits to hacking Facebook servers Dec 14th 2011 at 10:45PM
Follow Follow this article if you would like to receive notifications of updates.
Add a new comment
You need to be logged in to post comments. If you do not have an account then please register.
Comments
0 comments
There are no comments yet, be the first to add one!