Behind the Alicia Keys MySpace Scam

You might want to take a closer look at your MySpace “friends” and perhaps consider parting ways with those you’ve never met, or had any sort of association with outside of MySpace, if the Alicia Keys incident is anything to by.

Some visitors to her MySpace page ended up with far more than they bargained for… such as malware and an assortment of viruses, which had been planted on her profile by people who managed to obtain her password.

Apparently this case is merely the tip of the iceberg though.

The recent spate of attacks is just a piece of a larger problem. Scams and security breaches have been plaguing MySpace for at least two years, and Internet sleuths say social-networking sites have become the destination of choice for online swindlers.

It’s the hackers’ modus operandi that catches most people off guard though.

“The bad guys really are focusing on these social sites because of the trust people put in their friends’ list,” says Internet analyst John Pescatore of Gartner. “They don’t leap up and sell you penis enlargement or lottery tickets. They capture passwords.”

I still see a number of emails apparently sent by my bank asking me to “verify” my account details and passwords. I think most of us know to ignore to these sorts of emails now, but a MySpace “friend” sending some sort of “please verify” request may be enough to deceive some people.

And while we’re at it, just how safe are all of those Facebook apps that are floating around? How trustworthy are they really, and who knows just what sort of data they may clandestinely be collecting?