Sec?

Hi5, Myspace, Orkut and recently Facebook everyone seems to be enjoying the social networking manai. Yes, just seems to be enjoying, what they never tell you is how much spam they are getting daily after joining those network. No offence against who are enjoying those network service and the owners, but have you guys ever checked how much have these networks been exploited by spammers ?

Yesterday, my dear friend Niraj joined www.Hi5.com after he got a request from his long lost friend in USA. As soon as he uploaded his picture, he got 15 more friends requests.
OWw !

He is already popular in the gang.

But the problem was, he was having very hard time trying to remember and recognize all of those 15 friends whom he had never seen in his life. And one of them was from Benin ???
Soon after accepting two or three hot ladies (assuming they look exactly as they posted in their pictures) he got another 10 more requests and 20+ emails in an hour. The guy seems to be stud not just in his small cubicle, but also on the net. Maria was smiling ear to ears after glancing on Niraj’s LCD and I can read her smile, something fishy was going on ….

Here were the list of some of the subjects in those emails;

# Urgent
# Warning
# Are you ashamed of your tool
# 10% Off to giver your partner 100%
# Cheap replicas
# Rolex Watches now on your wrists
# I am alone
# She is waiting for you
…..

Was Niraj intrested in any of those emails ?

BIG NO !

Niraj seems to have suddenly made too many GOOD friends online. Who would give him 10% - 100% discount on Xclusive entertainment products. But the story doesn’t just end up here, neither this is just my friends story. It is almost everyones story who didn’t carefully read between the lines of during registering on these social network sites.

Here are few guidelines;

• NEVER TICK ON recieve email from other members (Unless you seriously want it).
  Even if you have to, then give your secondary email address (yes, the email address you used in high school to join or visit A+ websites, which you check only once a year just to celebrate its birthday).
• DONT join any community, group or forum within the social network, unless you know what it is. Is it your college group or school group ? or some kind of kinky fan club, who will bombard hundreds of emails per hour. First read few posts already posted on their groups forum.
• STOP being hyper activite - posting numerous comments, rating different users pictures. It just shows how active you are in the network. More active = More potential target.
• DONT STOP at poker if you dont know how to play. If you dont recognize anyone in the network stop reading their profiles, or looking their scantly claded pictures. Almost all social networking gives their members a tool to check track the users who visited their own profile. These vistors are easy baits for spamming.

Its good to have network of friends, collegues or business partners for quick knowledge about their whereabouts online. But the sad part is this same information is being garnered by so called - eMarketing groups or houses, well categorized (acc. to age, gender, location) and used to sell their campaigns.

And all you can do is press DELETE !