7 Facebook Security Problems Linger

Facebook has largely erased the rash of porn and violent images that affected the site last week, but its problems are far from over, researchers said yesterday.

In a blog about Facebook's security vulnerabilities posted Thursday, researchers at security vendor Barracuda Networks said Facebook still has little incentive to improve its site security.

"When you are trying to grow a social network as well as increase advertising revenue, security becomes not only a lower priority but sometimes a conflict of interest," the blog states.

Facebook continues to miss some key security issues on its pages, Barracuda says, and it outlined seven:

1. Fake Product Pages. "Knock-off luxury goods have always been popular scams," the blog noted. "If you actually get the product, which is a bit of a longshot, you are likely to find that the quality you expected from the brand is lacking at best. Facebook is rife with pages promoting these goods."

2. Manipulated Accounts Recommendations. "On social networks, those with less good motives have figured out how to game the recommendation system and use it to their advantage," the blog says. "This is very similar to how attackers have used search engine optimization to promote their malware. Friends are recommended in a variety of ways, but a simply exploited example is through shared apps. Spammer accounts sign up for the same popular apps that real users do and before too long they are showing up in your list of recommended friends."

3. Affiliate Spam. "Affiliate spam is a bigger and bigger part of the typical users incoming stream," Barracuda states. "They encourage or require the user to share it out to all their friends and say something like 'I love Olive Garden' before being redirected to a never-ending series of offers."

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