Facebook India might have denied rumours that about two lakh Facebook accounts in Bengaluru have been hacked and misused, but the recent spate of porn and vulgar images on news feed is proving to be quite a wake-up call for young FB addicts who are now getting wary of even making a click on their wall.
While some are removing their photos and videos, others are just deciding to quit the social networking site. Sajid Kadri was shocked to see an offensive photo of his friend sitting atop a holy shrine when he clicked on a link posted by a friend on Facebook. “I couldn’t believe that my friend would do such a disgusting thing. Though the photo looked morphed, I called her up to enquire. She was just shaken,” he says.
But Sajid was in for a bigger shock. “I started receiving calls from my friends saying they are getting vulgar links from my Facebook account,” he adds. After Sajid got to know that thousands of Facebook accounts have been hacked worldwide, he opted to stop logging on to Facebook.
Cyber expert and author Ankit Fadia explains, “Spam and malicious viruses have been common on Facebook for quite some time now. Typically, you will get a post or message from a friend. And since it’s your friend who sends the posts, one tends to trust it and clicks on the links. Clicking on the link infects your computer with the virus and copies of the same message are sent from your Facebook account to all your friends on Facebook.”
Like Sajid, 24-year-old student Andleeb after removing all her videos and photographs from her account has decided to completely delete her account after she got to know about the Facebook spam saga. “I just can’t take any risks. It’s simply not worth it,” she says.
Experts say that security will always be an issue with technology, and perfect security is not possible.
So Ankit suggests, “Don’t trust a message or wall post even if it’s from your friend. Install an antivirus. Install an anti-spyware and change your passwords regularly.”